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CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 
THIRTY-TWO VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED 

Edited by GEORGE M. WRONG and H. H. LANGTON 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



Part I 

THE FIRST 

EUROPEAN 

VISITORS 



Part II 

THE RISE 
OF NEW 
FRANCE 



1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY 

By Stephen Leacock. 

2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO 

By Stephen Leacock. 

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE 

By Charles W. Colby. 

4. THE JESUIT MISSIONS 

By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 

5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA 

By William Bennett Munro. 

6. THE GREAT INTENDANT 

By Thomas Chapais. 

7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR* 

By Charles W. Colby. 



Part III 

THE 
ENGLISH 
INVASION 



8. THE GREAT FORTRESS 

By William Wood. 

9. THE ACADIAN EXILES * 

By Arthur G. Doughty. 

10. THE PASSING OF NEV/ FRANCE 

By William Wood. 

u. THE WINNING OF CANADA 

By William Wood. 

NOTE.— Save for slight changes in arrangement and in the words 
of a few of the titles, this list remains essentially as printed in 
the prospectus with the twelve volumes first published, and may 
now be regarded as ftnal. The eight volumes marked with an 
asterisk, however, are still in preparation and subject to changes 
in authorship should unforeseen circumstances prevent any author 
from completing his manuscript. 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



12. THE FATHER OF BRITISH CANADA* 

By William Wood. 

13. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS 

By W. Stewart Wallace. 

14. THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 

By William Wood. 



Part IV 

THE 

BEGINNINGS 
OF BRITISH 

CANADA 



15. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS 

By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 

16. THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS 

By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

17. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER 

OF HIS PEOPLE 

By Ethel T. Raymond. 



Part V 

THE 

RED MAN 

IN CANADA 



18. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' 

ON HUDSON BAY 

By Ag-nes C. Laut. 

19. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT 

PLAINS 

By Lawrence J. Burpee. 

20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH 

By Stephen Leacock. 

21. THE RED RIVER COLONY 

By Louis Aubrey Wood. 

22. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST 

By Agues C. Laut. 

23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL* 

By Agnes C. Laut. 



PART VI 

PIONEERS 
OF THE 
NORTH AND 
WEST 



CHRONICLES OF CANADA SERIES 



Part VI I 

THE 
STRUGGLE 

FOR 

POLITICAL 

FREEDOM 



24. THE FAMILY COMPACT 

By W. Stewart Wallace, 

25. THE 'PATRIOTES' OF '37* 

By Alfred D. DeCelles. 

26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA 

By William Lawson Grant. 

27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR 

GOVERNMENT* 

By Archibald MacMechan, 



PART VIII 

THE 

GROWTH OF 

NATIONALITY 



28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERA- 

TION * 

By A. H. U. Colquhoun. 

29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD 

By Sir Joseph Pope. 

30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRID LAURIER * 

By Oscar D. Skelton. 



Part IX 
NATIONAL 
HIGHWAYS 



31. ALL AFLOAT 

By William Wood. 

32. THE RAILWAY BUILDERS 

By Oscar D. Skelton. 



TORONTO : GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 



THE WAR WITH 
THE UNITED STATES 

BY WILLIAM WOOD 




SIR ISAAC BROCK 
From a miniature in possession of Miss Sara Mickle, Toronto 



THE WAR WITH 
THE UNITED STATES 



A Chronicle of 1812 



BY 



WILLIAM WOOD 



;( 




TORONTO 

GLASGOW, BROOK & COMPANY 

1915 



t 3 5^ 
.W97 



Copyright in all Countries subscribing to 
the Berne Convention 






TO 

F. J. COCKBURN 

MY VERY GOOD FRIEND 

AFLOAT 

AND ASHORE 



{ 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. OPPOSING CLAIMS i 

II. OPPOSING FORCES 20 

III. 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT .... 41 

IV. 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON 

HEIGHTS 63 

V. 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND 

chXteauguay 96 

VI. 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE 

GREAT BLOCKADE 134 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . .173 

INDEX 177 



IX 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

SIR ISAAC BROCK ..... Frontispiece 

From a miniature in possession of Miss Sara 
Mickle, Toronto. 

MAP OF THE SEAT OF WAR, 1812-14 . . Facing page i 

Drawn and adapted by Bartholomew. 

SIR GEORGE PREVOST .... „ 50 

From a painting- in the Dominion Archives. 

MAP OF THE NIAGARA FRONTIER, 1812-14 . „ 76 

Drawn by Bartholomew. 

SACKETT'S HARBOUR AND FORT NIAGARA 

IN 1812 ,,108 

Drawn on the spot by British army officers. 
Prints in the John Ross Robertson Collection, 
Toronto Public Library. 

SIR JAMES YEO » 110 

From a portrait by A. Buck. 

SIR JAMES YEO'S FLAGSHIP, 1814 . . „ 112 

From the John Ross Robertson Collection, 
Toronto Public Library. 

THE 'SHANNON' AND THE 'CHESAPEAKE' 

IN HALIFAX HARBOUR, 1813 .' . „ 116 

Drawn under the direction of Lieut. Falkner of 

the 'Shannon.' 
Print in the John Ross Robertson Collection, 

Toronto Public Library. 

xi 



xii THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

CHARLES DE SALABERRY . . Facing page 126 

From a portrait in the Dominion Archives. 

SIR GORDON DRUMMOND . . . „ 132 

From the John Ross Robertson Collection, 
Toronto Public Library. 



CHAPTER I 

OPPOSING CLAIMS 

International disputes that end in war are 
not generally questions of absolute right and 
wrong. They may quite as well be questions 
of opposing rights. But, when there are rights 
on both sides, it is usually found that the side 
which takes the initiative is moved by its 
national desires as well as by its claims of 
right. 

This could hardly be better exemplified than 
by the vexed questions which brought about 
the War of 1812. The British were fighting 
for life and liberty against Napoleon. Napoleon 
was fighting to master the whole of Europe. 
The United States wished to make as much as 
possible out of unrestricted trade with both 
belligerents. But Napoleon's Berlin Decree 
forbade all intercourse whatever with the Brit- 
ish, while the British Orders-in-Council for- 
bade all intercourse whatever with Napoleon 
and his allies, except on condition that the 

w.u.s. A 



4. 



2 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

trade should first pass through British ports. 
Between two such desperate antagonists there 
was no safe place for an unarmed, indepen- 
dent, * free-trading * neutral. Every one was 
forced to take sides. The British being over- 
whelmingly strong at sea, while the French 
were correspondingly strong on land, American 
shipping was bound to suffer more from the 
British than from the French. The French 
seized every American vessel that infringed 
the Berlin Decree whenever they could manage 
to do so. But the British seized so many more 
for infringing the Orders-in-Council that the 
Americans naturally began to take sides with 
the French. 

Worse still, from the American point of 
view, was the British Right of Search, which 
meant the right of searching neutral merchant 
vessels either in British waters or on the high 
seas for deserters from the Royal Navy. Every 
other people whose navy could enforce it had 
always claimed a similar right. But other 
peoples* rights had never clashed with Ameri- 
can interests in at all the same way. What 
really roused the American government was 
not the abstract Right of Search, but its en- 
forcement at a time when so many hands 
aboard American vessels were British subjects 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 3 

evading service in their own Navy. The 
American theory was that the flag covered the 
crew wherever the ship might be. Such a 
theory might well have been made a question 
for friendly debate and settlement at any other 
time. But it was a new theory, advanced by 
a new nation, whose peculiar and most dis- 
turbing entrance on the international scene 
could not be suffered to upset the accepted 
state of things during the stress of a life-and- 
death war. Under existing circumstances the 
British could not possibly give up their long- 
established Right of Search without com- 
mitting national suicide. Neither could they 
relax their own blockade so long as Napoleon 
maintained his. The Right of Search and the 
double blockade of Europe thus became two 
vexed questions which led straight to war. 

But the American grievances about these 
two questions were not the only motives im- 
pelling the United States to take up arms. 
There were two deeply rooted national desires 
urging them on in the same direction. A good 
many Americans were ready to seize any 
chance of venting their anti-British feeling ; 
and most Americans thought they would only 
be fulfilling their proper ' destiny ' by wresting 
the whole of Canada from the British crown. 



4 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

These two national desires worked both ways 
for war — supporting the government case 
against the British Orders - in - Council and 
Right of Search on the one hand, while 
welcoming an alliance with Napoleon on the 
other. Americans were far from being unani- 
mous ; and the party in favour of peace was 
not slow to point out that Napoleon stood 
for tyranny, while the British stood for free- 
dom. But the adherents of the war party re- 
minded each other, as well as the British and 
the French, that Britain had wrested Canada 
from France, while France had helped to 
wrest the Thirteen Colonies from the British 
Empire. 

As usual in all modern wars, there was much 
official verbiage about the national claims and 
only unofficial talk about the national desires. 
But, again as usual, the claims became the 
more insistent because of the desires, and the 
desires became the more patriotically respect- 
able because of the claims of right. * Free 
Trade and Sailors* Rights' was the popular 
catchword that best describes the two strong 
claims of the United States. * Down with the 
British ' and * On to Canada * were the phrases 
that best reveal the two impelling national 
desires. 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 5 

Both the claims and the desires seem quite 
simple in themselves. But, in their connection 
with American politics, international affairs, 
and opposing British claims, they are com- 
plex to the last degree. Their complexities, 
indeed, are so tortuous and so multitudinous 
that they baffle description within the limits 
of the present book. Yet, since nothing can 
be understood without some reference to its 
antecedents, we must take at least a bird's- 
eye view of the growing entanglement which 
finally resulted in the War of 18 12. 

The relations of the British Empire with the 
United States passed through four gradually 
darkening phases between 1783 and 1812 — 
the phases of Accommodation, Unfriendliness, 
Hostility, and War. Accommodation lasted 
from the recognition of Independence till the 
end of the century. Unfriendliness then began 
with President Jefferson and the Democrats. 
Hostility followed in 1807, during Jefferson's 
second term, when Napoleon's BerHn Decree 
and the British Orders - in - Council brought 
American foreign relations into the five-year 
crisis which ended with the three-year war. 

William Pitt, for the British, and John Jay, 
the first chief justice of the United States, are 



6 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the two principal figures in the Accommoda- 
tion period. In 1783 Pitt, who, like his father, 
the great Earl of Chatham, was favourably- 
disposed towards the Americans, introduced 
a temporary measure in the British House of 
Commons to regulate trade with what was 
now a foreign country * on the most enlarged 
principles of reciprocal benefit ' as well as ' on 
terms of most perfect amity with the United 
States of America.' This bill, which showed 
the influence of Adam Smith's principles on 
Pitt's receptive mind, favoured American more 
than any other foreign trade in the mother 
country, and favoured it to a still greater 
extent in the West Indies. Alone among 
foreigners the Americans were to be granted 
the privilege of trading between their own 
ports and the West Indies, in their own vessels 
and with their own goods, on exactly the same 
terms as the British themselves. The bill 
was rejected. But in 1794, when the French 
Revolution was running its course of wild 
excesses, and the British government was even 
less inclined to trust republics. Jay succeeded 
in negotiating a temporary treaty which im- 
proved the position of American sea-borne trade 
with the West Indies. His government urged 
him to get explicit statements of principle 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 7 

inserted, more especially an3rthing that would 
make cargoes neutral when under neutral 
flags. This, however, was not possible, as 
Jay himself pointed out. ' That Britain, 'he 
said, *at this period, and involved in war, 
should not admit principles which would im- 
peach the propriety of her conduct in seizing 
provisions bound to France, and enemy's 
property on board neutral vessels, does not 
appear to me extraordinary.' On the whole. 
Jay did very well to get any treaty through at 
such a time ; and this mere fact shows that 
the general attitude of the mother country 
towards her independent children was far 
from being unfriendly. 

Unfriendliness began with the new century, 
when Jefferson first came into power. He 
treated the British navigation laws as if they 
had been invented on purpose to wrong Ameri- 
cans, though they had been in force for a 
hundred and fifty years, and though they had 
been originally passed, at the zenith of Crom- 
well's career, by the only republican govern- 
ment that ever held sway in England. Jeffer- 
son said that British policy was so perverse, 
that when he wished to forecast the British 
line of action on any particular point he would 
first consider what it ought to be and then 



8 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

infer the opposite. His official opinion was 
written in the following words : * It is not to 
the moderation or justice of others we are to 
trust for fair and equal access to market with 
our productions, or for our due share in the 
transportation of them ; but to our own means 
of independence, and the firm will to use them.' 
On the subject of impressment, or * Sailors* 
Rights,* he was clearer still : * The simplest 
rule will be that the vessel being American 
shall be evidence that the seamen on board 
of her are such/ This would have prevented 
the impressment of British seamen, even in 
British harbours, if they were under the 
American merchant flag — a principle almost 
as preposterous, at that particular time, as 
Jefferson's suggestion that the whole Gulf 
Stream should be claimed * as of our waters.' 

If Jefferson had been backed by a united 
public, or if his actions had been suited to his 
words, war would have certainly broken out 
during his second presidential term, which 
lasted from 1805 to 1809. But he was a party 
man, with many political opponents, and 
without unquestioning support from all on 
his own side, and he cordially hated armies, 
navies, and even a mercantile marine. His 
idea of an American Utopia was a common- 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 9 

wealth with plenty of commerce, but no more 
shipping than could be helped. 

I trust [he said] that the good sense of 
our country will see that its greatest pros- 
perity depends on a due balance between 
agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, 
and not on this protuberant navigation, 
which has kept us in hot water since the 
commencement of our government. . . . 
It is essentially necessary for us to have 
shipping and seamen enough to carry our 
surplus products to market, but beyond 
that I do not think we are bound to give 
it encouragement. . . . This exuberant com- 
merce brings us into collision with other 
Powers in every sea. 

Notwithstanding such opinions, Jefferson 
stood firm on the question of ' Sailors' Rights.' 
He refused to approve a treaty that had been 
signed on the last day of 1806 Iby his four com- 
missioners in London, chiefly because it pro- 
vided no precise guarantee against impress- 
ment. The British ministers had offered, and 
had sincerely meant, to respect all American 
rights, to issue special instructions against 
molesting American citizens under any cir- 
cumstances, and to redress every case of 



10 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

wrong. But, with a united nation behind 
them and an implacable enemy in front, they 
could not possibly give up the right to take 
British seamen from neutral vessels which 
were sailing the high seas. The Right of 
Search was the acknowledged law of nations 
all round the world ; and surrender on this 
point meant death to the Empire they were 
bound to guard. 

Their * no surrender * on this vital point 
was, of course, anathema to Jefferson. Yet 
he would not go beyond verbal fulminations. 
In the following year, however, he was nearly 
forced to draw the sword by one of those 
incidents that will happen during strained 
relations. In June 1807 two French men- 
of-war were lying off Annapolis, a hundred 
miles up Chesapeake Bay. Far down the bay, 
in Hampton Roads, the American frigate 
Chesapeake was fitting out for sea. Twelve 
miles below her anchorage a small British 
squadron lay just within Cape Henry, wait- 
ing to follow the Frenchmen out beyond the 
three-mile limit. As Jefferson quite justly 
said, this squadron was ' enjoying the hospi- 
tality of the United States.' Presently the 
Chesapeake got under way ; whereupon the 
British frigate Leopard made sail and cleared 



OPPOSING CLAIMS ii 

the land ahead of her. Ten miles out the 
Leopard hailed her, and sent an officer aboard 
to show the American commodore the orders 
from Admiral Berkeley at Halifax. These 
orders named certain British deserters as 
being among the Chesapeake's crew. The 
American commodore refused to allow a 
search ; but submitted after a fight, during 
which he lost twenty-one men killed and 
wounded. Four men were then seized. One 
was hanged ; another died ; and the other 
two were subsequently returned with the 
apologies of the British government. 

James Monroe, of Monroe Doctrine fame, 
was then American minister in London. 
Canning, the British foreign minister, who 
heard the news first, wrote an apology on the 
spot, and promised to make * prompt and 
effectual reparation * if Berkeley had been 
wrong. Berkeley was wrong. The Right of 
Search did not include the right to search 
a foreign man - of - war, though, unlike the 
modern * right of search,' which is confined 
to cargoes, it did include the right to search 
a neutral merchantman on the high seas for 
any * national ' who was * wanted.' Canning, 
however, distinctly stated that the men's 
nationality would affect the consideration of 



12 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

restoring them or not. Monroe now had a 
good case. But he made the fatal mistake of 
writing officially to Canning before he knew 
the details, and, worse still, of diluting his 
argument with other complaints which had 
nothing to do with the affair itself. The re- 
sult was a long and involved correspondence, 
a tardy and ungracious reparation, and much 
justifiable resentment on the American side. 

Unfriendliness soon became Hostility after 
the Chesapeake affair had sharpened the sting 
of the Orders-in-Council, which had been 
issued at the beginning of the same year, 1807. 
These celebrated Orders simply meant that so 
long as Napoleon tried to blockade the British 
Isles by enforcing his Berlin Decree, just so 
long would the British Navy be employed in 
blockading him and his allies. Such decisive 
action, of course, brought neutral shipping 
more than ever under the power of the British 
Navy, which commanded all the seaways to 
the ports of Europe. It accentuated the 
differences between the American and British 
governments, and threw the shadow of the 
coming storm over the exposed colony of 
Canada. 

Not having succeeded in his struggle for 
* Sailors* Rights,* Jefferson now took up the 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 13 

cudgels for * Free Trade ' ; but still without 
a resort to arms. His chosen means of war- 
fare was an Embargo Act, forbidding the 
departure of vessels from United States 
ports. This, although nominally aimed against 
France as well, was designed to make Great 
Britain submit by cutting off both her and 
her colonies from all intercourse with the 
United States. But its actual effect was to 
hurt Americans, and even Jefferson's own 
party, far more than it hurt the British. The 
Yankee skipper already had two blockades 
against * Free Trade.' The Embargo Act 
added a third. Of course it was evaded ; and 
a good deal of shipping went from the United 
States and passed into Canadian ports under 
the Union Jack. Jefferson and his followers, 
however, persisted in taking their own way. 
So Canada gained from the embargo much 
of what the Americans were losing. Quebec 
and Halifax swarmed with contrabandists, 
who smuggled back return cargoes into the 
New England ports, which were Federalist in 
party allegiance, and only too ready to evade 
or defy the edicts of the Democratic adminis- 
tration. Jefferson had, it is true, the satis- 
faction of inflicting much temporary hard- 
ship on cotton-spinning Manchester. But the 



14 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

American cotton-growing South suffered even 
more. 

The American claims of * Free Trade and 
Sailors' Rights ' were opposed by the British 
counter-claims of the Orders-in-Council and 
the Right of Search. But * Down with the 
British * and * On to Canada ' were without 
exact equivalents on the other side. The 
British at home were a good deal irritated by 
so much unfriendliness and hostility behind 
them while they were engaged with Napoleon 
in front. Yet they could hardly be described 
as anti-American ; and they certainly had no 
wish to fight, still less to conquer, the United 
States. Canada did contain an anti- American 
element in the United Empire Loyalists, whom 
the American Revolution had driven from 
their homes. But her general wish was to be 
left in peace. Failing that, she was prepared 
for defence. 

Anti-British feeling probably animated at 
least two-thirds of the American people on 
every question that caused international fric- 
tion ; and the Jeffersonian Democrats, who 
were in power, were anti-British to a man. 
So strong was this feeling among them that 
they continued to side with France even when 
she was under the military despotism of 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 15 

Napoleon. He was the arch-enemy of Eng- 
land in Europe. They were the arch-enemy of 
England in America. This alone was enough 
to overcome their natural repugnance to his 
autocratic ways. Their position towards the 
British was such that they could not draw 
back from France, whose change of govern- 
ment had made her a more efficient anti- 
British friend. * Let us unite with France 
and stand or fall together ' was the cry the 
Democratic press repeated for years in different 
forms. It was strangely prophetic. Jeffer- 
son's Embargo Act of 1808 began its self- 
injurious career at the same time that the 
Peninsular War began to make the first in- 
jurious breach in Napoleon^s Continental 
System. Madison's declaration of war in 18 12 
coincided with the opening of Napoleon's dis- 
astrous campaign in Russia. 

The Federalists, the party in favour of 
peace with the British, included many of the 
men who had done most for Independence ; 
and they were all, of course, above suspicion 
as patriotic Americans. But they were not 
unlike transatlantic, self-governing English- 
men. They had been alienated by the excesses 
of the French Revolution ; and they could 
not condone the tyranny of Napoleon. They 



i6 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

preferred American statesmen of the type of 
Washington and Hamilton to those of the 
type of Jefferson and Madison. And they 
were not inclined to be more ant i- British than 
the occasion required. They were strongest in 
New England and New York. The Democrats 
were strongest throughout the South and in 
what was then the West. The Federalists 
had been in power during the Accommodation 
period. The Democrats began with Unfriend- 
liness, continued with Hostility, and ended 
with War. 

The Federalists did not hesitate to speak 
their mind. Their loss of power had sharpened 
their tongues ; and they were often no more 
generous to the Democrats and to France 
than the Democrats were to them and to the 
British. But, on the whole, they made for 
goodwill on both sides, as well as for a better 
understanding of each other's rights and 
difficulties ; and so they made for peace. 
The general current, however, was against 
them, even before the Chesapeake affair ; and 
several additional incidents helped to quicken 
it afterwards. In 1808 the toast of the 
President of the United States was received 
with hisses at a great public dinner in London, 
given to the leaders of the Spanish revolt 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 17 

against Napoleon by British admirers. In 
181 1 the British sloop-of-war Little Belt was 
overhauled by the American frigate President 
fifty miles off-shore and forced to strike, after 
losing thirty-two men and being reduced to 
a mere battered hulk. The vessels came into 
range after dark; the British seem to have 
fired first ; and the Americans had the further 
excuse that they were still smarting under 
the Chesapeake afisiir. Then, in 18 12, an Irish 
adventurer called Henry, who had been doing 
some secret-service work in the United States 
at the instance of the Canadian governor- 
general, sold the duplicates of his correspond- 
ence to President Madison. These were of 
little real importance ; but they added fuel 
to the Democratic fire in Congress just when 
ant i- British feeling was at its worst. 

The fourth cause of war, the desire to con- 
quer Canada, was by far the oldest of all. It 
v/as older than Independence, older even than 
the British conquest of Canada. In 1689 
Peter Schuyler, mayor of Albany, and the 
acknowledged leader of the frontier districts, 
had set forth his * Glorious Enterprize * for the 
conquest and annexation of New France. 
Phips*s American invasion next year, carried 
out in complete independence of the home 

W.U.S. g 



i8 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

government, had been an utter failure. So 
had the second American invasion, led by 
Montgomery and Arnold during the Revolu- 
tionary War, nearly a century later. But the 
Americans had not forgotten their long de- 
sire ; and the prospect of another war at once 
revived their hopes. They honestly believed 
that Canada would be much better off as an 
integral part of the United States than as a 
British colony ; and most of them believed 
that Canadians thought so too. The lesson 
of the invasion of the * Fourteenth Colony * 
during the Revolution had not been learnt. 
The alacrity with which Canadians had stood 
to arms after the Chesapeake affair was little 
heeded. And both the nature and the strength 
of the union between the colony and the 
Empire were almost entirely misunderstood. 

Henry Clay, one of the most warlike of the 
Democrats, said : * It is absurd to suppose that 
we will not succeed in our enterprise against 
the enemy's Provinces. I am not for stopping 
at Quebec or anywhere else ; but I would take 
the whole continent from them, and ask them 
no favours. I wish never to see peace till we 
do. God has given us the power and the 
means. We are to blame if we do not use 
them.' Eustis, the American Secretary of War, 



OPPOSING CLAIMS 19 

said : * We can take Canada without soldiers. 
We have only to send officers into the Pro- 
vinces, and the people, disaffected towards 
their own Government, will rally round our 
standard/ And Jefferson summed it all up 
by prophesying that * the acquisition of Canada 
this year, as far as the neighbourhood of 
Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching.' 
When the leaders talked like this, it was no 
wonder their followers thought that the long- 
cherished dream of a conquered Canada was 
at last about to come true. 



CHAPTER II 

OPPOSING FORCES 

An armed mob must be very big indeed before 
it has the slightest chance against a small but 
disciplined army. 

So very obvious a statement might well be 
taken for granted in the history of any ordinary 
war. But * 1812 ' was not an ordinary war. 
It was a sprawling and sporadic war ; and it 
was waged over a vast territory by widely 
scattered and singularly heterogeneous forces 
on both sides. For this reason it is extremely 
difficult to view and understand as one con- 
nected whole. Partisan misrepresentation has 
never had a better chance. Americans have 
dwelt with justifiable pride on the frigate duels 
out at sea and the two flotilla battles on the 
Lakes. But they have usually forgotten that, 
though they won the naval battles, the British 
won the purely naval war. The mother- 
country British, on the other hand, have made 
too much of their one important victory at 

30 



OPPOSING FORCES 21 

sea, have passed too lightly over the lessons 
of the other duels there, and have forgotten 
how long it took to sweep the Stars and Stripes 
away from the Atlantic. Canadians have, of 
course, devoted most attention to the British 
victories won in the frontier campaigns on 
land, which the other British have heeded too 
little and Americans have been only too 
anxious to forget. Finally, neither the Cana- 
dians, nor the mother-country British, nor yet 
the Americans, have often tried to take a 
comprehensive view of all the operations by 
land and sea together. 

The character and numbers of the opposmg 
forces have been even less considered and even 
more misunderstood. Militia victories have 
been freely claimed by both sides, in defiance 
of the fact that the regulars were the really 
decisive factor in every single victory won 
by either side, afloat or ashore. The popu- 
lar notions about the numbers concerned are 
equally wrong. The totals were far greater 
than is generally known. Counting every man 
who ever appeared on either side, by land or 
sea, within the actual theatre of war, the 
united grand total reaches seven hundred 
thousand. This was most unevenly divided 
between the two opponents. The Americans 



22 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

had about 575,000, the British about 125,000. 
But such a striking difference in numbers was 
matched by an equally striking difference in 
discipline and training. The Americans had 
more than four times as many men. The 
British had more than four times as much 
discipline and training. 

The forces on the American side were a small 
navy and a swarm of privateers, a small 
regular army, a few * volunteers,* still fewer 

* rangers,' and a vast conglomeration of raw 
militia. The British had a detachment from 
the greatest navy in the world, a very small 

* Provincial Marine ' on the Lakes and the St 
Lawrence, besides various little subsidiary 
services afloat, including privateers. Their 
army consisted of a very small but latterly 
much increased contingent of Imperial regulars, 
a few Canadian regulars, more Canadian militia, 
and a very few Indians. Let us pass all these 
forces in review. 

The American Navy. During the Revolu- 
tion the infant Navy had begun a career of 
brilliant promise ; and Paul Jones had been 
a name to conjure with. British belittlement 
deprived him of his proper place in history ', 
but he was really the founder of the regular 
Navy that fought so gallantly in * 1 812.' A 



OPPOSING FORCES 23 

tradition had been created and a service had 
been formed. Political opinion, however, dis- 
couraged proper growth. President Jefferson 
laid down the Democratic party's idea of naval 
policy in his first Inaugural. * Beyond the 
small force which will probably be wanted for 
actual service in the Mediterranean, whatever 
annual sum you may think proper to appro- 
priate to naval preparations would perhaps 
be better employed in providing those articles 
which may be kept without waste or con- 
sumption, and be in readiness when any 
exigence calls them into use. Progress has 
been made in providing materials for 74-gun 
ships.' ^ This * progress ' had been made in 
1 80 1. But in 18 12, when Jefferson's disciple, 
Madison, formally declared war, not a single 
keel had been laid. Meanwhile, another idea 
of naval policy had been worked out into the 
ridiculous gunboat system. In 1807, during 
the crisis which followed the Berlin Decree, 
the Orders-in-Council, and the Chesapeake 

^ A ship-of-the-Iine, meaning- a battleship or man-of-war strong" 
enough to take a position in the line of battle, was of a different 
minimum size at different periods. The tendency towards in- 
crease of size existed a century ago as well as to-day. * Fourth- 
rates,' of 50 and 60 guns, dropped out of the line at the beginning- 
of the Seven Years' War. In 1812 the 74~gun three-decker was 
the smallest man-of-war regularly used in the line of battle. 



24 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

affair, Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine : * Be- 
lieving, myself, that gunboats are the only 
water defence which can be useful to us, and 
protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I 
am pleased with everything which promises to 
improve them.* Whether * improved ' or not, 
these gunboats were found worse than useless 
as a substitute for * the ruinous folly of a navy.* 
They failed egregiously to stop Jefferson's own 
countrymen from breaking his Embargo Act 
of 1808 ; and their weatherly qualities were so 
contemptible that they did not dare to lose 
sight of land without putting their guns in the 
hold. No wonder the practical men of the 
Navy called them ' Jeffs.' 

When President Madison summoned Con- 
gress in 181 1 war was the main topic of debate. 
Yet all he had to say about the Navy was 
contained in twenty-seven lukewarm words. 
Congress followed the presidential lead. The 
momentous naval vote of 1812 provided for an 
expenditure of six hundred thousand dollars, 
which was to be spread over three consecutive 
years and strictly limited to buying timber. 
Then, on the outbreak of v/ar, the government, 
consistent to the last, decided to lay up the 
whole of their sea-going navy lest it should be 
captured by the British. 



OPPOSING FORCES 25 

But this final indignity was more than the 
Navy could stand in silence. Some senior 
officers spoke their minds, and the party poli- 
ticians gave way. The result was a series of 
victories which, of their own peculiar kind, 
have never been eclipsed. Not one American 
ship-of-the-line was ever afloat during the 
war ; and only twenty-two frigates or smaller 
naval craft put out to sea. In addition, there 
were the three little flotillas on Lakes Erie, 
Ontario, and Champlain ; and a few minor 
vessels elsewhere. All the crews together did 
not exceed ten thousand men, replacements 
included. Yet, even with these niggard means, 
the American Navy won the command of two 
lakes completely, held the command of the 
third in suspense, won every important duel 
out at sea, except the famous fight against 
the Shannon, inflicted serious loss on British 
sea-borne trade, and kept a greatly superior 
British naval force employed on constant and 
harassing duty. 

The American Privateers, Besides the little 
Navy, there were 526 privately owned vessels 
which were officially authorized to prey on the 
enemy's trade. These were manned by forty 
thousand excellent seamen and had the chance 
of plundering the richest sea-borne commerce 



2(} THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

in the world. They certainly harassed British 
commerce, even in its own home waters ; and 
during the course of the war they captured no 
less than 1344 prizes. But they did prac- 
tically nothing towards reducing the British 
fighting force afloat ; and even at their own 
work of commerce-destroying they did less 
than one-third as much as the Navy in pro- 
portion to their numbers. 

The American Army. The Army had com- 
peted with the Navy for the lowest place in 
Jefferson's Inaugural of 1801. * This is the 
only government where every man will meet 
invasions of the public order as his own per- 
sonal concern. ... A well-disciplined militia 
is our best reliance for the first moments of 
war, till regulars may relieve them.' The 
Army was then reduced to three thousand 
men. * Such were the results of Mr Jeffer- 
son's low estimate of, or rather contempt for, 
the military character,' said General Win- 
field Scott, the best officer the United States 
produced between * 18 12' and the Civil War. 
In 1808 * an additional military force ' was 
authorized. In January 1812, after war had 
been virtually decided on, the establishment 
was raised to thirty-five thousand. But in 
June, when war had been declared, less than 



OPPOSING FORCES 27 

a quarter of this total could be called effec- 
tives, and more than half were still * wanting 
to complete.' The grand total of all American 
regulars, including those present with the 
colours on the outbreak of hostilities as well 
as those raised during the war, amounted to 
fifty-six thousand. Yet no general had six 
thousand actually in the firing line of any one 
engagement. 

The United States Volunteers. Ten thou- 
sand volunteers were raised, from first to last. 
They differed from the regulars in being en- 
listed for shorter terms of service and in being 
generally allowed to elect their own regimental 
officers. Theoretically they were furnished in 
fixed quotas by the different States, according 
to population. They resembled the regulars 
in other respects, especially in being directly 
under Federal, not State, authority. 

The Rangers. Three thousand men with a 
real or supposed knowledge of backwoods life 
served in the war. They operated in groups 
and formed a very unequal force — good, bad, 
and indifferent. Some were under the Federal 
authority. Others belonged to the different 
States. As a distinct class they had no appre- 
ciable influence on the major results of the 
war. 



2S THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

The Militia, The vast bulk of the American 
forces, more than three-quarters of the grand 
total by land and sea, was made up of the 
militia belonging to the different States of the 
Union. These militiamen could not be moved 
outside of their respective States without State 
authority ; and individual consent was also 
necessary to prolong a term of enlistment, even 
if the term should come to an end in the middle 
of a battle. Some enlisted for several months ; 
others for no more than one. Very few had 
any military knowledge whatever ; and most 
of the officers were no better trained than the 
men. The totals from all the different States 
amounted to 456,463. Not half of these ever 
got near the front ; and not nearly half of 
those who did get there ever came into action 
at all. Except at New Orleans, where the 
conditions were quite abnormal, the militia 
never really helped to decide the issue of any 
battle, except, indeed, against their own army. 
* The militia thereupon broke and fled ' re- 
curs with tiresome frequency in numberless 
dispatches. Yet the consequent charges of 
cowardice are nearly all unjust. The fellow- 
countrymen of those sailors who fought the 
American frigates so magnificently were no 
special kind of cowards. But, as a raw militia, 



OPPOSING FORCES 29 

they simply were to well-trained regulars what 
children are to men. 

American Non-Combatant Services. There 
were more than fifty thousand deaths reported 
on the American side ; yet not ten thousand 
men were killed or mortally wounded in all 
the battles put together. The medical de- 
partment, like the commissariat and transport, 
was only organized at the very last minute, 
even among the regulars, and then in a most 
haphazard way. Among the militia these in- 
dispensable branches of the service were never 
really organized at all. 

Such disastrous shortcomings were not 
caused by any lack of national resources. The 
population of the United States was about 
eight millions, as against eighteen millions in 
the British Isles. Prosperity was general ; at 
all events, up to the time that it was checked 
by Jefferson's Embargo Act. The finances 
were also thought to be most satisfactory. 
On the very eve of war the Secretary of the 
Treasury reported that the national debt had 
been reduced by forty-six million dollars since 
his party had come into power. Had this 
* war party * spent those millions on its Army 
and Navy, the war itself might have had an 
ending more satisfactory to the United States. 



30 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Let us now review the forces on the British 
side. 

The eighteen million people in the British 
Isles were naturally anxious to avoid war 
with the eight millions in the United States. 
They had enough on their hands as it was. 
The British Navy was being kept at a greater 
strength than ever before ; though it was 
none too strong for the vast amount of work 
it had to do. The British Army was waging 
its greatest Peninsular campaign. All the 
other naval and military services of what 
was already a world-wide empire had to 
be maintained. One of the most moment- 
ous crises in the world^s history was fast 
approaching ; for Napoleon, arch-enemy of 
England and mightiest of modern conquerors, 
was marching on Russia with five hundred 
thousand men. Nor was this all. There were 
troubles at home as well as dangers abroad. 
The king had gone mad the year before. The 
prime minister had recently been assassin- 
ated. The strain of nearly twenty years of 
war was telling severely on the nation. It 
was no time to take on a new enemy, eight 
millions strong, especially one who supplied 
so many staple products during peace and 
threatened both the sea flank of the mother 



OPPOSING FORCES 31 

country and the land flank of Canada during 
war. 

Canada was then little more than a long, 
weak line of settlements on the northern 
frontier of the United States. Counting in 
the Maritime Provinces, the population hardly 
exceeded five hundred thousand — as many 
people, altogether, as there were soldiers in 
one of Napoleon's armies, or Americans en- 
listed for service in this very war. Nearly 
two-thirds of this half-million were French 
Canadians in Lower Canada, now the pro- 
vince of Quebec. They were loyal to the 
British cause, knowing they could not live a 
French-Canadian life except within the British 
Empire. The population of Upper Canada, 
now Ontario, was less than a hundred thou- 
sand. The Anglo-Canadians in it were of two 
kinds : British immigrants and United Empire 
Loyalists, with sons and grandsons of each. 
Both kinds were loyal. But the 'U.E.L.'s' 
were anti-American through and through, 
especially in regard to the war-and-Demo- 
cratic party then in power. They could 
therefore be depended on to fight to the last 
against an enemy who, having driven them 
into exile once, was now coming to wrest their 
second New-World home from its allegiance 



32 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

to the British crown. They and their descend- 
ants in all parts of Canada numbered more 
than half the Anglo-Canadian population in 
1 812. The few thousand Indians near the 
scene of action naturally sided with the British, 
who treated them better and dispossessed 
them less than the Americans did. The only 
detrimental part of the population was the 
twenty-five thousand Americans, who simply 
used Canada as a good ground for exploita- 
tion, and who would have preferred to see it 
under the Stars and Stripes, provided that the 
change put no restriction on their business 
opportunities. 

The British Navy, About thirty thousand 
men of the British Navy, only a fifth of the 
whole service, appeared within the American 
theatre of war from first to last. This oldest 
and greatest of all navies had recently emerged 
triumphant from an age-long struggle for the i 
command of the sea. But, partly because of 
its very numbers and vast heritage of fame, it 
was suffering acutely from several forms of 
weakness. Almost twenty years of continuous 
war, with dull blockades during the last seven, 
was enough to make any service * go stale.' 
Owing to the enormous losses recruiting had 
become exceedingly and increasingly difficult. 



i 



OPPOSING FORCES 33 

even compulsory recruiting by press-gang. 
At the same time, Nelson's victories had filled 
the ordinary run of naval men with an over- 
weening confidence in their own invincibility ; 
and this over-confidence had become more 
than usually dangerous because of neglected 
gunnery and defective shipbuilding. The Ad- 
miralty had cut down the supply of practice 
ammunition and had allowed British ships to 
lag far behind those of other nations in material 
and design. The general inferiority of British 
shipbuilding was such an unwelcome truth to 
the British people that they would not believe 
it till the American frigates drove it home with 
shattering broadsides. But it was a very old 
truth, for all that. Nelson's captains, and 
those of still earlier wars, had always com- 
peted eagerly for the command of the better 
built French prizes, which they managed to 
take only because the superiority of their 
crews was great enough to overcome the in- 
feriority of their ships. There was a different 
tale to tell when inferior British vessels with 
* run-down ' crews met superior American 
vessels with first-rate crews. In those days 
training and discipline were better in the 
American mercantile marine than in the 
British ; and the American Navy, of course, 

w.u.s. r 



34 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

shared in the national efficiency at sea. Thus, 
with cheap materials, good designs, and ex- 
cellent seamen, the Americans started with 
great advantages over the British for single- 
ship actions ; and it was some time before 
their small collection of ships succumbed to 
the grinding pressure of the regularly organ- 
ized British fleet. 

The Provincial Marine, Canada had a little 
local navy on the Lakes called the Provincial 
Marine. It dated from the Conquest, and had 
done good service again during the Revolution, 
especially in Carleton's victory over Arnold on 
Lake Champlain in 1776. It had not, how- 
ever, been kept up as a proper naval force, but 
had been placed under the quartermaster- 
general's department of the Army, where it 
had been mostly degraded into a mere branch 
of the transport service. At one time the 
effective force had been reduced to 132 men ; 
though many more were hurriedly added just 
before the war. Most of its senior officers 
were too old ; and none of the juniors had en- 
joyed any real training for combatant duties. 
Still, many of the ships and men did well in 
the war, though they never formed a single 
properly organized squadron. 

British Privateers, Privateering was not a 



OPPOSING FORCES 35 

flourishing business in the mother country in 
1812. Prime seamen were scarce, owing to 
the great number needed in the Navy and 
in the mercantile marine. Many, too, had 
deserted to get the higher wages paid in 
* Yankees ' — * dollars for shillings,' as the 
saying went. Besides, there was little foreign 
trade left to prey on. Canadian privateers 
did better. They were nearly all * Bluenoses,* 
that is, they hailed from the Maritime Pro- 
vinces. During the three campaigns the Court 
of Vice-Admiralty at Halifax issued letters of 
marque to forty-four privateers, which em- 
ployed, including replacements, about three 
thousand men and reported over two hundred 
prizes. 

British Commissariat and Transport, Trans- 
port, of course, went chiefly by water. Rein- 
forcements and supplies from the mother 
country came out under convoy, mostly in 
summer, to Quebec, where bulk was broken, 
and whence both men and goods were sent to 
the front. There were plenty of experts in 
Canada to move goods west in ordinary times. 
The best of all were the French-Canadian 
voyageurs who manned the boats of the 
Hudson's Bay and North-West Companies. 
But there were not enough of them to carry on 



36 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the work of peace and war together. Great 
and skilful efforts, however, were made. 
Schooners, bateaux, boats, and canoes were 
all turned to good account. But the inland 
line of communications was desperately long 
and difficult to work. It was more than 
twelve hundred miles from Quebec to Amherst- 
burg on the river Detroit, even by the shortest 
route. 

The British Army. The British Army, like 
the Navy, had to maintain an exacting world- 
wide service, besides large contingents in the 
field, on resources which had been severely 
strained by twenty years of war. It was re- 
presented in Canada by only a little over four 
thousand effective men when the war began. 
Reinforcements at first came slowly and in 
small numbers. In 1813 some foreign corps 
in British pay, like the Watteville and the 
Meuron regiments, came out. But in 18 14 
more than sixteen thousand men, mostly 
Peninsular veterans, arrived. Altogether, in- 
cluding every man present in any part of 
Canada during the whole war, there were over 
twenty-five thousand British regulars. In 
addition to these there were the troops in- 
vading the United States at Washington and 
Baltimore, with the reinforcements that joined 



OPPOSING FORCES 37 

them for the attack on New Orleans — in all, 
nearly nine thousand men. The grand total 
within the theatre of war was therefore about 
thirty-four thousand. 

The Canadian Regulars. The Canadian regu- 
lars were about four thousand strong. An- 
other two thousand took the place of men who 
were lost to the service, making the total six 
thousand, from first to last. There were six 
corps raised for permanent service : the Royal 
Newfoundland Regiment, the New Brunswick 
Regiment, the Canadian Fencibles, the Royal 
Veterans, the Canadian Voltigeurs, and the 
Glengarry Light Infantry. The Glengarries 
were mostly Highland Roman Catholics who 
had settled Glengarry county on the Ottawa, 
where Ontario marches with Quebec. The 
Voltigeurs were French Canadians under a 
French-Canadian officer in the Imperial Army. 
In the other corps there were many United 
Empire Loyalists from the different provinces, 
including a good stiffening of old soldiers and 
their sons. 

The Canadian Embodied Militia, The Cana- 
dian militia by law comprised every able- 
bodied man except the few specially exempt, 
like the clergy and the judges. A hundred 
thousand adult males were liable for service. 



38 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Various causes, however, combined to prevent 
half of these from getting under arms. Those 
who actually did duty were divided into 
* Embodied * and * Sedentary ' corps. The em- 
bodied militia consisted of picked men, drafted 
for special service ; and they often approxi- 
mated so closely to the regulars in discipline 
and training that they may be classed, at 
the very least, as semi-regulars. Counting 
all those who passed into the special reserve 
during the war, as well as those who went to 
fill up the ranks after losses, there were nearly 
ten thousand of these highly trained, semi- 
regular militiamen engaged in the war. 

The Canadian Sedentary Militia. The ' Sed- 
entaries ' comprised the rest of the militia. 
The number under arms fluctuated greatly ; 
so did the length of time on duty. There were 
never ten thousand employed at any one time 
all over the country. As a rule, the * Seden- 
taries ' did duty at the base, thus releasing the 
better trained men for service at the front. 
Many had the blood of soldiers in their veins ; 
and nearly all had the priceless advantage of 
being kept in constant touch with regulars. 
A passionate devotion to the cause also helped 
them to acquire, sooner than most other men, 
both military knowledge and that true spirit 



OPPOSING FORCES 39 

of discipline which, after all, is nothing but self- 
sacrifice in its finest patriotic form. 

The Indians, Nearly all the Indians sided 
with the British or else remained neutral. 
They were, however, a very uncertain force ; 
and the total number that actually served at 
the front throughout the war certainly fell 
short of five thousand. 

This completes the estimate of the opposing 
forces — of the more than half a million Ameri- 
cans against the hundred and twenty-five 
thousand British; with these great odds en- 
tirely reversed whenever the comparison is 
made not between mere quantities of men but 
between their respective degrees of discipline 
and training. 

But it does not complete the comparison 
between the available resources of the two 
opponents in one most important particular — 
finance. The Army Bill Act, passed at Quebec 
on August I, 1812, was the greatest single 
financial event in the history of Canada. It 
was also full of political significance ; for the 
parliament of Lower Canada was overwhelm- 
ingly French-Canadian. The million dollars 
authorized for issue, together with interest at 
six per cent, pledged that province to the 
equivalent of four years' revenue. The risk 



40 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

was no light one. But it was nobly run and 
well rewarded. These Army Bills were the 
first paper money in the whole New World 
that never lost face value for a day, that paid 
all their statutory interest, and that were 
finally redeemed at par. The denominations 
ran from one dollar up to four hundred dollars. 
Bills of one, two, three, and four dollars could 
always be cashed at the Army Bill Office in 
Quebec. After due notice the whole issue was 
redeemed in November 1816. A special fea- 
ture well worth noting is the fact that Army 
Bills sometimes commanded a premium of five 
per cent over gold itself, because, being con- 
vertible into government bills of exchange on 
London, they were secure against any fluc- 
tuations in the price of bullion. A special 
comparison well worth making is that between 
their own remarkable stability and the equally 
remarkable instability of similar instruments 
of finance in the United States, where, after 
vainly trying to help the government through 
its difficulties, every bank outside of New 
England was forced to suspend specie pay- 
ments in 18 14, the year of the Great Blockade. 



CHAPTER III 

1812: OFF TO THE FRONT 

President Madison sent his message to Con- 
gress on the ist of June and signed the re- 
sultant * war bill ' on the i8th following. 
Congress was as much divided as the nation 
on the question of peace or war. The vote 
in the House of Representatives was seventy- 
nine to forty-nine, while in the Senate it was 
nineteen to thirteen. The government itself 
was * solid.' But it did little enough to make 
up for the lack of national whole-heartedness 
by any efficiency of its own. Madison was 
less zealous about the war than most of his 
party. He was no Pitt or Lincoln to ride the 
storm, but a respectable lawyer - politician, 
whose forte was writing arguments, not wield- 
ing his country's sword. Nor had he in his 
Cabinet a single statesman with a genius for 
making war. His war secretary, William 
Eustis, never grasped the military situation 
at all, and had to be replaced by John Arm- 

41 



42 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

strong after the egregious failures of the first 
campaign. During the war debate in June, 
Eustis was asked to report to Congress how 
many of the ' additional * twenty-five thou- 
sand men authorized in January had already 
been enlisted. The best answer he could 
make was a purely * unofficial opinion ' that 
the number was believed to exceed five 
thousand. 

The first move to the front was made by 
the Navy. Under very strong pressure the 
Cabinet had given up the original idea of 
putting the ships under a glass case ; and four 
days after the declaration of war orders were 
sent to the senior naval officer, Commodore 
Rodgers, to ' protect our returning commerce ' 
by scattering his ships about the American 
coast just where the British squadron at Hali- 
fax would be most likely to defeat them one 
by one. Happily for the United States, these 
orders were too late. Rodgers had already 
sailed. He was a man of action. His little 
squadron of three frigates, one sloop, and one 
brig lay in the port of New York, all ready 
waiting for the word. And when news of the 
declaration arrived, he sailed within the hour, 
and set out in pursuit of a British squadron that 
was convoying a fleet of merchantmen from 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 43 

the West Indies to England. He missed the 
convoy, which worked into Liverpool, Bristol, 
and London by getting to the north of him. 
But, for all that, his sudden dash into British 
waters with an active, concentrated squadron 
produced an excellent effect. The third day 
out the British frigate Belvidera met him and 
had to run for her life into Halifax. The 
news of this American squadron's being at 
large spread alarm all over the routes between 
Canada and the outside world. Rodgers 
turned south within a few hours' sail of the 
English Channel, turned west off Madeira, 
gave Halifax a wide berth, and reached Boston 
ten weeks out from Sandy Hook. * We have 
been so completely occupied in looking out for 
Commodore Rodgers,' wrote a British naval 
officer, ' that we have taken very few prizes.' 
Even Madison was constrained to admit that 
this offensive move had had the defensive 
results he had hoped to reach in his own 
* defensive ' way. * Our Trade has reached 
our ports, having been much favoured by a 
squadron under Commodore Rodgers.' 

The policy of squadron cruising was con- 
tinued throughout the autumn and winter of 
1 8 12. There were no squadron battles. But 
there was unity of purpose ; and British 



44 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

convoys were harassed all over the Atlantic 
till well on into the next year. During this 
period there were five famous duels, which 
have made the Constitution and the United 
States, the Hornet and the Wasp, four names 
to conjure with wherever the Stars and Stripes 
are flown. The Constitution fought the first, 
when she took the Guerriere in August, due 
east of Boston and south of Newfoundland. 
The Wasp won the second in September, by 
taking the Frolic half-way between Halifax 
and Bermuda. The United States won the 
third in October, by defeating the Macedonian 
south-west of Madeira. The Constitution won 
the fourth in December, off Bahia in Brazil, 
by defeating the Java, And the Hornet won 
the fifth in February, by taking the Peacock, 
off Demerara, on the coast of British Guiana. 
This closed the first period of the war at 
sea. The British government had been so 
anxious to avoid war, and to patch up peace 
again after war had broken out, that they 
purposely refrained from putting forth their 
full available naval strength till 1813. At 
the same time, they would naturally have 
preferred victory to defeat ; and the fact that 
Hiost of the British Navy was engaged else- 
where, and that what was available was 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 45 

partly held in leash, by no means dims the 
glory of those four men-of-war which the 
Americans fought with so much bravery and 
skill, and with such well-deserved success. 
No wonder Wellington said peace with the 
United States would be worth having at any 
honourable price, * if we could only take some 
of their damned frigates ! ' Peace was not 
to come for another eighteen months. But 
though the Americans won a few more duels 
out at sea, besides two annihilating flotilla 
victories on the Lakes, their coast was block- 
aded as completely as Napoleon's, once the 
British Navy had begun its concerted move- 
ments on a comprehensive scale. From that 
time forward the British began to win the 
naval war, although they won no battles and 
only one duel that has lived in history. This 
dramatic duel, fought between the Shannon 
and the Chesapeake on June i, 18 13, was not 
itself a more decisive victory for the British 
than previous frigate duels had been for the 
Americans. But it serves better than any 
other special event to mark the change from 
the first period, when the Americans roved 
the sea as conquerors, to the second, when 
they were gradually blockaded into utter 
impotence. 



46 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Having now followed the thread of naval 
events to a point beyond the other limits of 
this chapter, we must return to the American 
movements against the Canadian frontier and 
the British counter - movements intended to 
checkmate them. 

Quebec and Halifax, the two great Canadian 
seaports, were safe from immediate American 
attack ; though Quebec was the ultimate ob- 
jective of the Americans all through the war. 
But the frontier west of Quebec offered several 
tempting chances for a vigorous invasion, if the 
American naval and military forces could only 
be made to work together. The whole life of 
Canada there depended absolutely on her in- 
land waterways. If the Americans could cut 
the line of the St Lawrence and Great Lakes 
at any critical point, the British would lose 
everything to the west of it ; and there were 
several critical points of connection along this 
line. St Joseph's Island, commanding the 
straits between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, 
was a vital point of contact with all the Indians 
to the west. It was the British counterpoise 
to the American post at Michilimackinac, 
which commanded the straits between Lake 
Huron and Lake Michigan. Detroit com- 
manded the waterway between Lake Huron 



I8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 47 

and Lake Erie ; while the command of the 
Niagara peninsula ensured the connection be- 
tween Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. At the 
head of the St Lawrence, guarding the entrance 
to Lake Ontario, stood Kingston. Montreal 
was an important station midway between 
Kingston and Quebec, besides being an ex- 
cellent base for an army thrown forward 
against the American frontier. Quebec was 
the general base from which all the British 
forces were directed and supplied. 

Quick work, by water and land together, 
was essential for American success before the 
winter, even if the Canadians were really so 
anxious to change their own flag for the Stars 
and Stripes. But the American government 
put the cart before the horse — the Army before 
the Navy — and weakened the military forces 
of invasion by dividing them into two inde- 
pendent commands. General Henry Dear- 
born was appointed commander-in-chief, but 
only with control over the north - eastern 
country, that is. New England and New York. 
Thirty years earlier Dearborn had served in 
the War of Independence as a junior officer; 
and he had been Jefferson's Secretary of War. 
Yet he was not much better trained as a 
leader than his raw men were as followers, 



48 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

and he was now sixty-one. He established 
his headquarters at Greenbush, nearly opposite 
Albany, so that he could advance on Montreal 
by the line of the Hudson, Lake Champlain, 
and the Richelieu. The intended advance, 
however, did not take place this year. Green- 
bush was rather a recruiting depot and camp 
of instruction than the base of an army in the 
field ; and the actual campaign had hardly 
begun before the troops went into winter 
quarters. The commander of the north-west- 
ern army was General William Hull. And 
his headquarters were to be Detroit, from 
which Upper Canada was to be quickly over- 
run without troubling about the co-operation 
of the Navy. Like Dearborn, Hull had served 
in the War of Independence. But he had been 
a civilian ever since ; he was now fifty-nine ; 
and his only apparent qualification was his 
having been governor of Michigan for seven 
years. Not until September, after two defeats 
on land, was Commodore Chauncey ordered 
* to assume command of the naval force on 
Lakes Erie and Ontario, and use every exertion 
to obtain control of them this fall.' Even then 
Lake Champlain, an essential link both in the 
frontier system and on Dearborn's proposed 
line of march, was totally forgotten. 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 49 

To complete the dispersion of force, Eustis 
forgot all about the military detachments 
at the western forts. Fort Dearborn (now 
Chicago) and Michilimackinac, important as 
points of connection with the western tribes, 
were left to the devices of their own inade- 
quate garrisons. In 1801 Dearborn himself, 
Eustis's predecessor as Secretary of War, had 
recommended a peace strength of two hun- 
dred men at Michilimackinac, usually known 
as ^ Mackinaw.' In 18 12 there were not so 
many at Mackinaw and Chicago put together. 

It was not a promising outlook to an Ameri- 
can military eye — the cart before the horse, 
the thick end of the wedge turned towards the 
enemy, three incompetent men giving dis- 
connected orders on the northern frontier, and 
the western posts neglected. But Eustis was 
full of self-confidence. Hull was * enthusing ' 
his militiamen. And Dearborn was for the 
moment surpassing both, by proposing to 
* operate, with effect, at the same moment, 
against Niagara, Kingston, and Montreal.' 

From the Canadian side the outlook was 
also dark enough to the trained eye ; though 
not for the same reasons. The menace here 
was from an enemy whose general resources 

w.u.s. D 



50 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

exceeded those in Canada by almost twenty to 
one. The silver lining to the cloud was the 
ubiquitous British Navy and the superior 
training and discipline of the various little 
military forces immediately available for 
defence. 

The Maritime Provinces formed a sub- 
ordinate command, based on the strong naval 
station of Halifax, where a regular garrison 
was always maintained by the Imperial govern- 
ment. They were never invaded, or even 
seriously threatened. It was only in 1814 
that they came directly into the scene of 
action, and then only as the base from which 
the invasion of Maine was carried out. 

We must therefore turn to Quebec as the 
real centre of Canadian defence, which, in- 
deed, it was best fitted to be, not only from 
its strategical situation, but from the fact that 
it was the seat of the governor-general and 
commander-in-chief. Sir George Prevost. Like 
Sir John Sherbrooke, the governor of Nova 
Scotia, Prevost was a professional soldier with 
an unblemished record in the Army. But, 
though naturally anxious to do well, and 
though very suavely diplomatic, he was not 
the man, as we shall often see, either to face 
a military crisis or to stop the Americans from 




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J'loiii ;i. piiiiit in:.' ill the 1 )i)iiiiiiii;ii Ai (:lii\ cs 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 51 

stealing marches on him by negotiation. On 
the outbreak of war he was at headquarters 
in Quebec, dividing his time between his civil 
and military duties, greatly concerned with 
international diplomacy, and always full of 
caution. 

At York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada a 
very different man was meanwhile preparing 
to checkmate Hull's * north-western army ' of 
Americans, which was threatening to invade 
the province. Isaac Brock was not only a 
soldier born and bred, but, alone among the 
leaders on either side, he had the priceless gift 
of genius. He was now forty- two, having been 
born in Guernsey on October 6, 1769, in the 
same year as Napoleon and Wellington. Like 
the Wolfes and the Montcalms, the Brocks 
had followed the noble profession of arms for 
many generations. Nor were the De Lisles, 
his mother's family, less distinguished for the 
number of soldiers and sailors they had been 
giving to England ever since the Norman 
Conquest. Brock himself, when only twenty- 
nine, had commanded the 49th Foot in Holland 
under Sir John Moore, the future hero of 
Corunna, and Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was 
so soon to fall victorious in Egypt. Two 
years after this he had stood beside another 



52 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

and still greater man at Copenhagen, * mighty 
Nelson/ who there gave a striking instance of 
how a subordinate inspired by genius can 
win the day by disregarding the over-caution 
of a commonplace superior. We may be 
sure that when Nelson turned his blind eye 
on Parker^s signal of recall the lesson was not 
thrown away on Brock. 

For ten long years of inglorious peace Brock 
had now been serving on in Canada, while his 
comrades in arms were winning distinction on 
the battlefields of Europe. This was partly 
due to his own excellence : he was too good a 
man to be spared after his first five years were 
Up in 1807 ; for the era of American hostility 
had then begun. He had always been obser- 
vant. But after 1807 ^^ ^^^ redoubled his 
efforts to * learn Canada/ and learn her thor- 
oughly. People and natural resources, pro- 
ducts and means of transport, armed strength 
on both sides of the line and the best plan of 
defence, all were studied with unremitting 
zeal. In 181 1 he became the acting lieutenant- 
governor and commander of the forces in 
Upper Canada, where he soon found out that 
the members of parliament returned by the 
* American vote * were bent on thwarting 
every effort he could make to prepare the 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 53 

province against the impending storm. In 
18 1 2, on the very day he heard that war had 
been declared, he wished to strike the unready 
Americans hard and instantly at one of their 
three accessible points of assembly — Fort 
Niagara, at the upper end of Lake Ontario, 
opposite Fort George, which stood on the other 
side of the Niagara river ; Sackett's Harbour, 
at the lower end of Lake Ontario, thirty-six 
miles from Kingston ; and Ogdensburg, on 
the upper St Lawrence, opposite Fort Prescott. 
But Sir George Prevost, the governor-general, 
was averse from an open act of war against the 
Northern States, because they were hostile to 
Napoleon and in favour of maintaining peace 
with the British ; while Brock himself was 
soon turned from this purpose by news of 
Hull's American invasion farther west, as well 
as by the necessity of assembling his own 
thwarting little parliament at York. 

The nine days' session, from July 27 to 
August 5, yielded the indispensable supplies. 
But the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 
as a necessary war measure, was prevented by 
the disloyal minority, some of whom wished 
to see the British defeated and all of whom 
were ready to break their oath of allegi- 
ance whenever it suited them to do so. The 



54 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

patriotic majority, returned by the votes of 
United Empire Loyalists and all others who 
were British born and bred, issued an address 
that echoed the appeal made by Brock himself 
in the following words : * We are engaged in 
an awful and eventful contest. By unanimity 
and despatch in our councils and by vigour 
in our operations we may teach the enemy 
this lesson : That a country defended by free 
men, enthusiastically devoted to the cause of 
their King and Constitution, can never be 
conquered/ 

On August 5, being at last clear of his im- 
mediate duties as a civil governor, Brock 
threw himself ardently into the work of 
defeating Hull, who had crossed over into 
Canada from Detroit on July ii and issued a 
proclamation at Sandwich the following day. 
This proclamation shows admirably the sort 
of impression which the invaders wished to 
produce on Canadians. 

The United States are sufficiently power- 
ful to afford you every security consistent 
with their rights and your expectations. 
I tender you the invaluable blessings of 
Civil, Political, and Religious Liberty. . . . 
The arrival of an army of Friends must 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 55 

be hailed by you with a cordial welcome* 
You will be emancipated from Tyranny 
and Oppression and restored to the digni- 
fied station of Freemen. ... If, contrary to 
your own interest and the just expecta- 
tion of my country, you should take part 
in the approaching contest, you will be 
considered and treated as enemies and the 
horrors and calamities of war will Stalk 
before you. If the barbarous and Savage 
policy of Great Britain be pursued, and 
the savages let loose to murder our Citizens 
and butcher our women and children, this 
war will be a war of extermination. The 
first stroke with the Tomahawk, the first 
attempt with the Scalping Knife, will be 
the Signal for one indiscriminate scene of 
desolation. No white man found fight- 
ing by the Side of an Indian will be taken 
prisoner. Instant destruction will be his 
Lot. . . • 

This was war with a vengeance. But Hull 
felt less confidence than his proclamation was 
intended to display. He knew that, while the 
American government had been warned in 
January about the necessity of securing the 
naval command of Lake Erie, no steps had 



56 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

yet been taken to secure it. Ever since the 
beginning of March, when he had written a 
report based on his seven years' experience 
as governor of Michigan, he had been gradu- 
ally learning that Eustis was bent on acting 
in defiance of all sound military advice. In 
April he had accepted his new position very 
much against his will and better judgment. 
In May he had taken command of the assem- 
bling militiamen at Dayton in Ohio. In June 
he had been joined by a battalion of inex- 
perienced regulars. And now, in July, he 
was already feeling the ill effects of having 
to carry on what should have been an am- 
phibious campaign without the assistance 
of any proper force afloat ; for on the 2nd, 
ten days before he issued his proclamation at 
Sandwich, Lieutenant Rolette, an enterprising 
French - Canadian officer in the Provincial 
Marine, had cut his line of communication 
along the Detroit and had taken an American 
schooner which contained his official plan of 
campaign, besides a good deal of baggage and 
stores. 

There were barely six hundred British on 
the line of the Detroit when Hull first crossed 
over to Sandwich with twenty-five hundred 
men. These six hundred comprised less than 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT S7 

150 regulars, about 300 militia, and some 150 
Indians. Yet Hull made no decisive effort 
against the feeble little fort of Maiden, which 
was the only defence of Amherstburg by land. 
The distance was nothing, only twelve miles 
south from Sandwich. He sent a sort of fly- 
ing column against it. But this force went 
no farther than half-way, where the Ameri- 
cans were checked at the bridge over the 
swampy little Riviere aux Canards by the 
Indians under Tecumseh, the great War Chief 
of whom we shall soon hear more. 

Hull's failure to take Fort Maiden was 
one fatal mistake. His failure to secure his 
communications southward from Detroit was 
another. Apparently yielding to the preva- 
lent American idea that a safe base could 
be created among friendly Canadians without 
the trouble of a regular campaign, he sent off 
raiding parties up the Thames. According to 
his own account, these parties * penetrated 
sixty miles into the settled part of the pro- 
vince.' According to Brock, they * ravaged 
the country as far as the Moravian Town.' 
But they gained no permanent foothold. 

By the beginning of August Hull's position 
had already become precarious. The Cana- 
dians had not proved friendly. The raid up 



58 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the Thames and the advance towards Amherst- 
burg had both failed. And the first British 
reinforcements had already begun to arrive. 
These were very small. But even a few good 
regulars helped to discourage Hull ; and the 
new British commander, Colonel Procter of 
the 41st, was not yet to be faced by a task 
beyond his strength. Worse yet for the 
Americans, Brock might soon be expected 
from the east ; the Provincial Marine still 
held the water line of communication from 
the south ; and dire news had just come in 
from the west. 

The moment Brock had heard of the de- 
claration of war he had sent orders post-haste 
to Captain Roberts at St Joseph's Island, 
either to attack the Americans at Michili- 
mackinac or stand on his own defence. 
Roberts received Brock's orders on the 15th 
of July. The very next day he started for 
Michilimackinac with 45 men of the Royal 
Veterans, 180 French-Canadian voyageurs, 
400 Indians, and two ' unwieldy ' iron six- 
pounders. Surprise was essential, to prevent 
the Americans from destroying their stores ; 
and the distance was a good fifty miles. But, 
* by the almost unparalleled exertions of the 
Canadians who manned the boats, we arrived 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 59 

at the place of Rendezvous at 3 o'clock the 
following morning/ One of the iron six- 
pounders was then hauled up the heights, 
which rise to eight hundred feet, and trained 
on the dumbfounded Americans, while the 
whole British force took post for storm- 
ing. The American commandant, Lieutenant 
Hanks, who had only fifty-seven effective men, 
thereupon surrendered without firing a shot. 

The news of this bold stroke ran like wild- 
fire through the whole North -West. The 
effect on the Indians was tremendous, imme- 
diate, and wholly in favour of the British. 
In the previous November Tecumseh's brother, 
known far and wide as the * Prophet,' had 
been defeated on the banks of the Tippe- 
canoe, a river of Indiana, by General Harrison, 
of whom we shall hear in the next campaign. 
This battle, though small in itself, was looked 
upon as the typical victory of the disposses- 
sing Americans ; so the British seizure of 
Michilimackinac was hailed with great joy as 
being a most effective counter-stroke. Nor 
was this the only reason for rejoicing. Michili- 
mackinac and St Joseph's commanded the 
two lines of communication between the 
western wilds and the Great Lakes ; so the 
possession of both by the British was more 



6o THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

than a single victory, it was a promise of vic- 
tories to come. No wonder Hull lamented 
this * opening of the hive/ which * let the 
swarms ' loose all over the wilds on his inland 
flank and rear. 

He would have felt more uneasy still if he 
had known what was to happen when Captain 
Heald received his orders at Fort Dearborn 
(Chicago) on August 9. Hull had ordered 
Heald to evacuate the fort as soon as pos- 
sible and rejoin headquarters. Heald had 
only sixty-six men, not nearly enough to over- 
awe the surrounding Indians. News of the 
approaching evacuation spread quickly during 
the six days of preparation. The Americans 
failed to destroy the strong drink in the 
fort. The Indians got hold of it, became un- 
governably drunk, and killed half of Heald^s 
men before they had gone a mile. The rest 
surrendered and were spared. Heald and 
his wife were then sent to Mackinaw, where 
Roberts treated them very kindly and sent 
them on to Pittsburg. The whole affair was 
one between Indians and Americans alone. 
But it was naturally used by the war party 
to inflame American feeling against all things 
British. 

While Hull was writing to Fort Dearborn 



i8i2 : OFF TO THE FRONT 6i 

and hearing bad news from Michilimackinac, 
he was also getting more and more anxious 
about his own communications to the south. 
With no safe base in Canada, and no safe line 
of transport by water from Lake Erie to the 
village of Detroit, he decided to clear the road 
which ran north and south beside the Detroit 
river. But this was now no easy task for his 
undisciplined forces, as Colonel Procter was 
bent on blocking the same road by sending 
troops and Indians across the river. On 
August 5, the day Brock prorogued his parlia- 
ment at York, Tecumseh ambushed Hull's 
first detachment of two hundred men at 
Brownstown, eighteen miles south of Detroit. 
On the 7th Hull began to withdraw his 
forces from the Canadian side. On the 8th 
he ordered six hundred men to make a second 
attempt to clear the southern road. But on 
the 9th these men were met at Maguaga, only 
fourteen miles south of Detroit, by a mixed 
force of British — regulars, militia, and In- 
dians. The superior numbers of the Ameri- 
cans enabled them to press the British back 
at first. But, on the loth, when the British 
showed a firm front in a new position, the 
Americans retired discouraged. Next day 
Hull withdrew the last of his men from Cana- 



62 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

dian soil, exactly one month after they had 
first set foot upon it. The following day was 
spent in consulting his staff and trying to 
reorganize his now unruly militia. On the 
evening of the 13th he made his final effort 
to clear the one line left, by sending out 
four hundred picked men under his two best 
colonels, M'Arthur and Cass, who were ordered 
to make an inland detour through the woods. 
That same night Brock stepped ashore at 
Amherstburg. 



i 



CHAPTER IV 

1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND 
QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 

The prorogation which released Brock from 
his parliamentary duties on August 5 had been 
followed by eight days of the most strenuous 
military work, especially on the part of the 
little reinforcement which he was taking west 
to Amherstburg. The Upper Canada militia- 
men, drawn from the United Empire Loyalists 
and from the British-born, had responded 
with hearty goodwill, all the way from Glen- 
garry to Niagara. But the population was 
so scattered and equipment so scarce that 
no attempt had been made to have whole 
battalions of * Select Embodied Militia ' ready 
for the beginning of the war, as in the more 
thickly peopled province of Lower Canada. 
The best that could be done was to embody 
the two flank companies — the Light and 
Grenadier companies — of the most urgently 
needed battalions. But as these companies 
contained all the picked men who were 

63 



64 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

readiest for immediate service, and as the 
Americans were very slow in mobilizing their 
own still more unready army, Brock found 
that, for the time being, York could be left 
and Detroit attacked with nothing more than 
his handful of regulars, backed by the flank- 
company militiamen and the Provincial Marine. 

Leaving York the very day he closed the 
House there, Brock sailed over to Burlington 
Bay, marched across the neck of the Niagara 
peninsula, and embarked at Long Point with 
every man the boats could carry — three hun- 
dred, all told, forty regulars of the 41st and 
two hundred and sixty flank-company militia- 
men. Then, for the next five days, he fought 
his way, inch by inch, along the north shore of 
Lake Erie against a persistent westerly storm. 
The news by the way was discouraging. 
Hull's invasion had unsettled the Indians 
as far east as the Niagara peninsula, which 
the local militia were consequently afraid to 
leave defenceless. But once Brock reached 
the scene of action, his insight showed him 
what bold skill could do to turn the tide of 
feeling all along the western frontier. 

It was getting on for one o'clock in the 
morning of August 14 when Lieutenant Rolette 
challenged Brock's leading boat from aboard 



i8i2 : BROCK AT DETROIT 65 

the Provincial Marine schooner General Hunter. 
As Brock stepped ashore he ordered all com- 
manding officers to meet him within an hour. 
He then read Hull's dispatches, which had been 
taken by Rolette with the captured schooner 
and by Tecumseh at Brownstown. By two 
o'clock all the principal officers and Indian 
chiefs had assembled, not as a council of war, 
but simply to tell Brock everything they knew. 
Only Tecumseh and Colonel Nichol, the quarter- 
master of the little army, thought that Detroit 
itself could be attacked with any prospect of 
success. Brock listened attentively ; made up 
his mind ; told his officers to get ready for im- 
mediate attack ; asked Tecumseh to assemble 
all the Indians at noon ; and dismissed the 
meeting at four. Brock and Tecumseh read 
each other at a glance ; and Tecumseh, turn- 
ing to the tribal chiefs, said simply, ' This is 
a man,' a commendation approved by them 
all with laconic, deep * Ho-ho's ! ' 

Tecumseh was the last great leader of the 
Indian race and perhaps the finest embodiment 
of all its better qualities. Like Pontiac, fifty 
years before, but in a nobler way, he tried to 
unite the Indians against the exterminating 
American advance. He was apparently on 

the eve of forming his Indian alliance when he 
w.u.s, B 



66 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

returned home to find that his brother the 
Prophet had just been defeated at Tippecanoe. 
The defeat itself was no great thing. But it 
came precisely at a time when it could exert 
most influence on the unstable Indian char- 
acter and be most effective in breaking up 
the alliance of the tribes. Tecumseh, divining 
this at once, lost no time in vain regrets, but 
joined the British next year at Amherstburg. 
He came with only thirty followers. But 
stray warriors kept on arriving ; and many 
of the bolder spirits joined him when war 
became imminent. At the time of Brock's 
arrival there were a thousand effective Indians 
under arms. Their arming was only author- 
ized at the last minute ; for Brock's dispatch 
to Prevost shows how strictly neutral the 
Canadian government had been throughout 
the recent troubles between the Indians and 
Americans. He mentions that the chiefs at 
Amherstburg had long been trying to obtain 
the muskets and ammunition * which for years 
had been withheld, agreeably to the instruc- 
tions received from Sir James Craig, and since 
repeated by Your Excellency.' 

Precisely at noon Brock took his stand 
beneath a giant oak at Amherstburg sur- 
rounded by his officers. Before him sat 



i8i2 : BROCK AT DETROIT 67 

Tecumseh. Behind Tecumseh sat the chiefs ; 
and behind the chiefs a thousand Indians in 
their war-paint. Brock then stepped forward 
to address them. Erect, alert, broad-shoul- 
dered, and magnificently tall ; blue-eyed, fair- 
haired, with frank and handsome countenance ; 
he looked every inch the champion of a great 
and righteous cause. He said the Long Knives 
had come to take away the land from both the 
Indians and the British whites, and that now 
he would not be content merely to repulse 
them, but would follow and beat them on 
their own side of the Detroit. After the pause 
that was usual on grave occasions, Tecumseh 
rose and answered for all his followers. He 
stood there the ideal of an Indian chief : tall, 
stately, and commanding ; yet tense, lithe, 
observant, and always ready for his spring. 
He the tiger. Brock the lion ; and both un- 
flinchingly at bay. 

Next morning, August 15, an early start was 
made for Sandwich, some twelve miles north, 
where a five-gun battery was waiting to be 
unmasked against Detroit across the river. 
Arrived at Sandwich, Brock immediately sent 
across his aide-de-camp. Colonel Macdonell, 
with a letter summoning Hull to surrender. 
Hull wrote back to say he was prepared to 



68 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

stand his ground. Brock at once unmasked 
his battery and made ready to attack next 
day. With the men on detachment Hull still 
had a total of twenty-five hundred. Brock 
had only fifteen hundred, including the Pro- 
vincial Marine. But HulFs men were losing 
what discipline they had and were becoming 
distrustful both of their leaders and of them- 
selves ; while Brock's men were gaining dis- 
cipline, zeal, and inspiring confidence with 
every hour. Besides, the British were all 
effectives ; while Hull had over five hundred 
absent from Detroit and as many more in- 
effective on the spot ; which left him only 
fifteen hundred actual combatants. He also 
had a thousand non - combatants — men, 
women, and children — all cowering for shelter 
from the dangers of battle, and half dead 
with the far more terrifying apprehension of 
an Indian massacre. 

Brock's five -gun battery made excellent 
practice during the afternoon without suffering 
any material damage in return. One chance 
shell produced a most dismaying effect in 
Detroit by killing Hanks, the late commandant 
of Mackinaw, and three other officers with him. 
At twilight the firing ceased on both sides. 



i8i2 : BROCK AT DETROIT 69 

Immediately after dark Tecumseh led six 
hundred eager followers down to their canoes 
a little way below Sandwich. These Indians 
were told off by tribes, as battalions are by 
companies. There, in silent, dusky groups, 
moving soft-foot on their moccasins through 
the gloom, were Shawnees and Miamis from 
Tecumseh's own lost home beside the Wabash, 
Foxes and Sacs from the lowan valley, Otta- 
was and Wyandots, Chippewas and Potawa- 
tomis, some braves from the middle prairies 
between the Illinois and the Mississippi, and 
even Winnebagoes and Dakotahs from the far 
North-West. The flotilla of crowded canoes 
moved stealthily across the river, with no 
louder noise than the rippling current made. 
As secretly, the Indians crept ashore, stole 
inland through the quiet night, and, circling 
north, cut off Hull's army from the woods. 
Little did Hull's anxious sentries think that 
some of the familiar cries of night-birds round 
the fort were signals being passed along from 
scout to scout. 

As the beautiful summer dawn began to 
break at four o'clock that fateful Sunday morn- 
ing, the British force fell in, only seven hun- 
dred strong, and more than half militia. The 
thirty gunners who had served the Sandwich 



70 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

battery so well the day before also fell in, with 
five little field-pieces, in case Brock could force 
a battle in the open. Their places in the 
battery were ably filled by every man of the 
Provincial Marine whom Captain Hall could 
spare from the Queen Charlotte^ the flagship 
of the tiny Canadian flotilla. Brock's men 
and his light artillery were soon afloat and 
making for Spring Wells, more than three 
miles below Detroit. Then, as the Queen 
Charlotte tan up her sunrise flag, she and the 
Sandwich battery roared out a challenge to 
which the Americans replied with random aim. 
Brock leaped ashore, formed front towards 
Hull, got into touch with Tecumseh's Indians 
on his left, and saw that the British land 
and water batteries were protecting his right, 
as prearranged with Captain Hall. 

He had intended to wait in this position, 
hoping that Hull would march out to the 
attack. But, even before his men had finished 
taking post, the whole problem was suddenly 
changed by the arrival of an Indian to say 
that M^Arthur's four hundred picked men, 
whom Hull had sent south to bring in the 
convoy, were returning to Detroit at once. 
There was now only a moment to decide 
whether to retreat across the river, form front 



i8i2 : BROCK AT DETROIT 71 

against M 'Arthur, or rush Detroit immedi- 
ately. But, within that fleeting moment, 
Brock divined the true solution and decided 
to march straight on. With Tecumseh riding 
a grey mustang by his side, he led the way 
in person. He wore his full-dress gold-and- 
scarlet uniform and rode his charger Alfred, 
the splendid grey which Governor Craig had 
given him the year before, with the recom- 
mendation that * the whole continent of 
America could not furnish you with so safe 
and excellent a horse,' and for the good 
reason that ^ I wish to secure for my old 
favourite a kind and careful master.' 

The seven hundred redcoats made a gallant 
show, all the more imposing because the 
militia were wearing some spare uniforms 
borrowed from the regulars and because the 
confident appearance of the whole body led 
the discouraged Americans to think that these 
few could only be the vanguard of much 
greater numbers. So strong was this belief 
that Hull, in sudden panic, sent over to Sand- 
wich to treat for terms, and was astounded to 
learn that Brock and Tecumseh were the two 
men on the big grey horses straight in front 
of him. While Hull's envoys were crossing 
the river and returning, the Indians were be- 



72 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

ginning to raise their war-whoops in the woods 
and Brock was reconnoitring within a mile 
of the fort. This looked formidable enough, 
if properly defended, as the ditch was six feet 
deep and twelve feet wide, the parapet rose 
twenty feet, the palisades were of twenty-inch 
cedar, and thirty-three guns were pointed 
through the embrasures. But Brock correctly 
estimated the human element inside, and was 
just on the point of advancing to the assault 
when Hull's white flag went up. 

The terms were soon agreed upon. Hull's 
whole army, including all detachments, sur- 
rendered as prisoners of war, while the terri- 
tory of Michigan passed into the military 
possession of King George. Abundance of 
food and military stores fell into British hands, 
together with the Adams, a fine new brig that 
had just been completed. She was soon re- 
christened the Detroit. The Americans sullenly 
trooped out. The British elatedly marched 
in. The Stars and Stripes came down de- 
feated. The Union Jack went up victorious 
and was received with a royal salute from all 
the British ordnance, afloat and ashore. The 
Indians came out of the woods, yelling with 
delight and firing their muskets in the air. 
But, grouped by tribes, they remained out- 



i8i2 : BROCK AT DETROIT 73 

side the fort and settlement, and not a single 
outrage was committed. Tecumseh himself 
rode in with Brock ; and the two great leaders 
stood out in front of the British line while the 
colours were being changed. Then Brock, in 
view of all his soldiers, presented his sash and 
pistols to Tecumseh. Tecumseh, in turn, gave 
his many-coloured Indian sash to Brock, who 
wore it till the day he died. 

The effect of the British success at Detroit 
far exceeded that which had followed the 
capture of Mackinaw and the evacuation of 
Fort Dearborn. Those, however important to 
the West, were regarded as mainly Indian 
affairs. This was a white man's victory and 
a white man's defeat. Hull's proclamation 
thenceforth became a laughing - stock. The 
American invasion had proved a fiasco. The 
first American army to take the field had 
failed at every point. More significant still, 
the Americans were shown to be feeble in 
organization and egregiously mistaken in their 
expectations. Canada, on the other hand, 
had already found her champion and men 
quite fit to follow him. 

Brock left Procter in charge of the West 
and hurried back to the Niagara frontier. 



74 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Arrived at Fort Erie on August 23 he was 
dismayed to hear of a dangerously one-sided 
armistice that had been arranged with the 
enemy. This had been first proposed, on 
even terms, by Prevost, and then eagerly 
accepted by Dearborn, after being modified 
in favour of the Americans. In proposing an 
armistice Prevost had rightly interpreted the 
wishes of the Imperial government. It was 
wise to see whether further hostilities could 
not be averted altogether ; for the obnoxious 
Orders -in -Council had been repealed. But 
Prevost was criminally weak in assenting to 
the condition that all movements of men and 
material should continue on the American 
side, when he knew that corresponding move- 
ments were impossible on the British side for 
lack of transport. Dearborn, the American 
commander-in-chief, was only a second-rate 
general. But he was more than a match for 
Prevost at making bargains. 

Prevost was one of those men who succeed 
half-way up and fail at the top. Pure Swiss 
by blood, he had, like his father, spent his life 
in the British Army, and had risen to the 
rank of lieutenant-general. He had served 
with some distinction in the West Indies, and 
had been made a baronet for defending 



i8i2: AN ARMISTICE 75 

Dominica in 1805. In 1808 he became 
governor of Nova Scotia, and in 181 1, at the 
age of forty-four, governor-general and com- 
mander-in-chief of Canada. He and his wife 
were popular both in the West Indies and in 
Canada ; and he undoubtedly deserved well 
of the Empire for having conciliated the 
French Canadians, who had been irritated by 
his predecessor, the abrupt and masterful 
Craig. The very important Army Bill Act 
was greatly due to his diplomatic handling 
of the French Canadians, who found him so 
congenial that they stood by him to the end. 
His native tongue was French. He under- 
stood French ways and manners to perfection ; 
and he consequently had far more than the 
usual sympathy with a people whose nature 
and circumstances made them particularly 
sensitive to real or fancied slights. All this 
is more to his credit than his enemies were 
willing to admit, either then or afterwards. 
But, in spite of all these good qualities, Pre- 
vost was not the man to safeguard British 
honour during the supreme ordeal of a war ; 
and if he had lived in earlier times, when nick- 
names were more apt to become historic, he 
might well have gone down to posterity as 
Prevost the Pusillanimous. 



76 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Day after day Prevost's armistice kept the 
British helpless, while supplies and reinforce- 
ments for the Americans poured in at every 
advantageous point. Brock was held back 
from taking either Sackett's Harbour, which 
was meanwhile being strongly reinforced from 
Ogdensburg, or Fort Niagara, which was being 
reinforced from Oswego. Procter was held 
back from taking Fort Wayne, at the point of 
the salient angle south of Lake Michigan and 
west of Lake Erie — a quite irretrievable loss. 
For the moment the British had the command 
of all the Lakes. But their golden oppor- 
tunity passed, never to return. By land their 
chances were also quickly disappearing. On 
September i, a week before the armistice 
ended, there were less than seven hundred 
Americans directly opposed to Brock, who 
commanded in person at Queenston and Fort 
George. On the day of the battle in October 
there were nearly ten times as many along 
the Niagara frontier. 

The very day Brock heard that the disas- 
trous armistice was over he proposed an im- 
mediate attack on Sackett's Harbour. But 
Prevost refused to sanction it. Brock then 
turned his whole attention to the Niagara 
frontier, where the Americans were assem- 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 77 

bling in such numbers that to attack them 
was out of the question. The British began 
to receive a few supplies and reinforcements. 
But the Americans had now got such a long 
start that, on the fateful 13th of October, they 
outnumbered Brock's men four to one — 4000 
to 1000 along the critical fifteen miles between 
the Falls and Lake Ontario ; and 6800 to 
1700 along the whole Niagara river, from lake 
to lake, a distance of thirty-three miles. The 
factors which helped to redress the adverse 
balance of these odds were Brock himself, 
his disciplined regulars, the intense loyalty 
of the militia, and the * telegraph.^ This 
* telegraph ' was a system of visual signal- 
ling by semaphore, much the same as that 
which Wellington had used along the lines of 
Torres Vedras. 

The immediate moral effects, however, were 
even more favourable to the Americans than 
the mere physical odds ; for Prevost's armis- 
tice both galled and chilled the British, who 
were eager to strike a blow. American con- 
fidence had been much shaken in September 
by the sight of the prisoners from Detroit, 
who had been marched along the river road 
in full view of the other side. But it in- 
creased rapidly in October as reinforcements 



78 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

poured in. On the 8th a council of war de- 
cided to attack Fort George and Queenston 
Heights simultaneously with every available 
man. But Smyth, the American general com- 
manding above the Falls, refused to co-operate. 
This compelled the adoption of a new plan in 
which only a feint was to be made against 
Fort George, while Queenston Heights were 
to be carried by storm. The change entailed 
a good deal of extra preparation. But when 
Lieutenant Elliott, of the American Navy, 
cut out two British vessels at Fort Erie on 
the 9th, the news made the American troops 
so clamorous for an immediate invasion that 
their general, Van Rensselaer, was afraid 
either to resist them or to let their ardour cool. 
In the American camp opposite Queenston 
all was bustle on the loth of October ; and 
at three the next morning the whole army 
was again astir, waiting till the vanguard had 
seized the landing on the British side. But a 
wrong leader had been chosen ; mistakes were 
plentiful ; and confusion followed. Nearly all 
the oars had been put into the first boat, 
which, having overshot the mark, was made 
fast on the British side ; whereupon its 
commander disappeared. The troops on the 
American shore shivered in the drenching 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 79 

autumn rain till after daylight. Then they 
went back to their sodden camp, wet, angry, 
and disgusted. 

While the rain came down in torrents the 
principal officers were busy revising their 
plans. Smyth was evidently not to be de- 
pended on ; but it was thought that, with 
all the advantages of the initiative, the four 
thousand other Americans could overpower 
the one thousand British and secure a per- 
manent hold on the Queenston Heights just 
above the village. These heights ran back 
from the Niagara river along Lake Ontario 
for sixty miles west, curving north-eastwards 
round Burlington Bay to Dundas Street, 
which was the one regular land line of com- 
munication running west from York. There- 
fore, if the Americans could hold both the 
Niagara and the Heights, they would cut 
Upper Canada in two. This was, of course, 
quite evident to both sides. The only doubt- 
ful questions were. How should the first 
American attack be made and how should it 
be met ? 

The American general, Stephen Van Rens- 
selaer, was a civilian who had been placed at the 
head of the New York State militia by Governor 
Tompkins, both to emphasize the fact that 



8o THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

expert regulars were only wanted as subordi- 
nates and to win a cunning move in the game 
of party politics. Van Rensselaer was not 
only one of the greatest of the old ' patroons ' 
who formed the landed aristocracy of Dutch 
New York, but he was also a Federalist. 
Tompkins, who was a Democrat, therefore 
hoped to gain his party ends whatever the 
result might be. Victory would mean that 
Van Rensselaer had been compelled to advance 
the cause of a war to which he objected ; while 
defeat would discredit both him and his party, 
besides providing Tompkins with the excuse 
that it would all have happened very differ- 
ently if a Democrat had been in charge. 

Van Rensselaer, a man of sense and honour, 
took the expert advice of his cousin. Colonel 
Solomon Van Rensselaer, who was a regular 
and the chief of the staff. It was Solomon 
Van Rensselaer who had made both plans, 
the one of the 8th, for attacking Fort George 
and the Heights together, and the one of the 
loth, for feinting against Fort George while 
attacking the Heights. Brock was puzzled 
about what was going to happen next. He 
knew that the enemy were four to one and 
that they could certainly attack both places 
if Smyth would co-operate. He also knew 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 8i 

that they had boats and men ready to circle 
round Fort George from the American ' Four 
Mile Creek ' on the lake shore behind Fort 
Niagara. Moreover, he was naturally in- 
clined to think that when the boats prepared 
for the nth were left opposite Queenston all 
day long, and all the next day too, they were 
probably intended to distract his attention 
from Fort George, where he had fixed his own 
headquarters. 

On the 1 2th the American plan was matured 
and concentration begun at Lewiston, opposite 
Queenston. Large detachments came in, under 
perfect cover, from Four Mile Creek behind 
Fort Niagara. A smaller number marched 
down from the Falls and from Smyth's com- 
mand still higher up. The camps at Lewiston 
and the neighbouring Tuscarora Village were 
partly concealed from every point on the oppo- 
site bank, so that the British could form no 
safe idea of what the Americans were about. 
Solomon Van Rensselaer was determined that 
the advance-guard should do its duty this 
time ; so he took charge of it himself and 
picked out 40 gunners, 300 regular infantry, 
and 300 of the best militia to make the 
first attack. These were to be supported by 
seven hundred regulars. The rest of the four 

W.U.S. F 



82 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

thousand men available were to cross over 
afterwards. The current was strong ; but the 
river was little more than two hundred yards 
wide at Queenston and it could be crossed in 
less than ten minutes. The Queenston Heights 
themselves were a more formidable obstacle, 
even if defended by only a few men, as they 
rose 345 feet above the landing-place. 

There were only three hundred British in 
Queenston to meet the first attack of over 
thirteen hundred Americans ; but they con- 
sisted of the two flank companies of Brock's 
old regiment, the 49th, supported by some 
excellent militia. A single gun stood on the 
Heights. Another was at Vrooman's Point 
a mile below. Two miles farther, at Brown's 
Point, stood another gun with another de- 
tachment of militia. Four miles farther still 
was Fort George, with Brock and his second- 
in-command, Colonel Sheaffe of the 49th. 
About nine miles above the Heights was 
the little camp at Chippawa, which, as we 
shall see, managed to spare 150 men for the 
second phase of the battle. The few hundred 
British above this had to stand by their own 
posts, in case Smyth should try an attack 
on his own account, somewhere between the 
Falls and Lake Erie. 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 83 

At half-past three in the dark morning of 
the 13th of October, Solomon Van Rensselaer 
with 225 regulars sprang ashore at the Queens- 
ton ferry landing and began to climb the bank. 
But hardly had they shown their heads above 
the edge before the grenadier company of 
the 49th, under Captain Dennis, poured in a 
stinging volley which sent them back to cover. 
Van Rensselaer was badly wounded and was 
immediately ferried back. The American sup- 
ports, under Colonel Christie, had trouble in 
getting across ; and the immediate command 
of the invaders devolved upon another regular. 
Captain Wool. 

As soon as the rest of the first detachment 
had landed. Wool took some three hundred 
infantry and a few gunners, half of all who 
were then present, and led them up-stream, in 
single file, by a fisherman's path which curved 
round and came out on top of the Heights 
behind the single British gun there. Progress 
was very slow in this direction, though the 
distance was less than a mile, as it was still 
pitch-dark and the path was narrow and 
dangerous. The three hundred left at the 
landing were soon reinforced, and the crossing 
went on successfully, though some of the 
American boats were carried down-stream to 



84 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the British post at Vrooman's, where all the 
men in them were made prisoners and marched 
off to Fort George. 

Meanwhile, down at Fort George, Brock 
had been roused by the cannonade only three 
hours after he had finished his dispatches. 
Twenty-four American guns were firing hard 
at Queenston from the opposite shore and two 
British guns were replying. Fort Niagara, 
across the river from Fort George, then began 
to speak ; whereupon Fort George answered 
back. Thus the sound of musketry, five to 
seven miles away, was drowned ; and Brock 
waited anxiously to learn whether the real 
attack was being driven home at Queenston, or 
whether the Americans were circling round 
from their Four Mile Creek against his own 
position at Fort George. Four o'clock passed. 
The roar of battle still came down from 
Queenston. But this might be a feint. Not 
even Dennis at Queenston could tell as yet 
whether the main American army was coming 
against him or not. But he knew they must 
be crossing in considerable force, so he sent 
a dragoon galloping down to Brock, who was 
already in the saddle giving orders to Sheaffe 
and to the next senior officer, Evans, when 
this messenger arrived. Sheaffe was to follow 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 85 

towards Queenston the very instant the 
Americans had shown their hand decisively 
in that direction ; while Evans was to stay at 
Fort George and keep down the fire from Fort 
Niagara. 

Then Brock set spurs to Alfred and raced 
for Queenston Heights. It was a race for 
more than his life, for more, even, than his 
own and his army's honour : it was a race for 
the honour, integrity, and very life of Canada. 
Miles ahead he could see the spurting flashes 
of the guns, the British two against the 
American twenty-four. Presently his quick 
eye caught the fitful running flicker of the 
opposing lines of musketry above the landing- 
place at Queenston. As he dashed on he met 
a second messenger, Lieutenant Jarvis, who 
was riding down full-speed to confirm the news 
first brought by the dragoon. Brock did not 
dare draw rein ; so he beckoned Jarvis to 
gallop back beside him. A couple of minutes 
sufficed for Brock to understand the whole 
situation and make his plan accordingly. Then 
Jarvis wheeled back with orders for Sheaffe 
to bring up every available man, circle round 
inland, and get into touch with the Indians. 
A few strides more, and Brock was ordering 
the men on from Brown's Point, He paused 



86 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

another moment at Vrooman's, to note the 
practice made by the single gun there. Then, 
urging his gallant grey to one last turn of 
speed, he burst into Queenston through the 
misty dawn just where the grenadiers of his 
own old regiment stood at bay. 

In his full-dress red and gold, with the 
arrow-patterned sash Tecumseh had given him 
as a badge of honour at Detroit, he looked, 
from plume to spur, a hero who could turn 
the tide of battle against any odds. A ring- 
ing cheer broke out in greeting. But he 
paused no longer than just enough to wave 
a greeting back and take a quick look round 
before scaling the Heights to where eight 
gunners with their single eighteen-pounder 
were making a desperate effort to check the 
Americans at the landing-place. Here he dis- 
mounted to survey the whole scene of action. 
The Americans attacking Queenston seemed 
to be at least twice as strong as the British. 
The artillery odds were twelve to one. And 
over two thousand Americans were drawn up 
on the farther side of the narrow Niagara 
waiting their turn for the boats. Neverthe- 
less, the British seemed to be holding their 
own. The crucial question was : could they 
hold it till Sheaffe came up from Fort George, 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 87 

till Bullock came down from Chippawa, till 
both had formed front on the Heights, with 
Indians on their flanks and artillery support 
from below ? 

Suddenly a loud, exultant cheer sounded 
straight behind him, a crackling fire broke 
out, and he saw Wool's Americans coming 
over the crest and making straight for the 
gun. He was astounded ; and well he might 
be, since the fisherman's path had been re- 
ported impassable by troops. But he in- 
stantly changed the order he happened to be 
giving from * Try a longer fuse ! ' to ^ Spike 
the gun and follow me ! * With a sharp clang 
the spike went home, and the gunners fol- 
lowed Brock downhill towards Queenston. 
There was no time to mount, and Alfred 
trotted down beside his swiftly running 
master. The elated Americans fired hard ; 
but their bullets all flew high. Wool's three 
hundred then got into position on the Heights ; 
while Brock in the village below was collect- 
ing the nearest hundred men that could be 
spared for an assault on the invaders. 

Brock rapidly formed his men and led 
them out of the village at a fast run to a low 
stone wall, where he halted and said, ' Take 
breath, boys ; you '11 need it presently ! ' on 



88 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

which they cheered. He then dismounted 
and patted Alfred, whose flanks still heaved 
from his exertions. The men felt the sockets 
of their bayonets ; took breath ; and then 
followed Brock, who presently climbed the 
wall and drew his sword. He first led them 
a short distance inland, with the intention of 
gaining the Heights at the enemy's own level 
before turning riverwards for the final charge. 
Wool immediately formed front with his back 
to the river ; and Brock led the one hundred 
British straight at the American centre, which 
gave way before him. Still he pressed on, 
waving his sword as an encouragement for 
the rush that was to drive the enemy down 
the cliff. The spiked eighteen-pounder was 
recaptured and success seemed certain. But, 
just as his men were closing in, an American 
stepped out of the trees, only thirty yards 
away, took deliberate aim, and shot him dead. 
The nearest men at once clustered round to 
help him, and one of the 49th fell dead across 
his body. The Americans made the most of 
this target and hit several more. Then the 
remaining British broke their ranks and re- 
tired, carrying Brock's body into a house at 
Queenston, where it remained throughout the 
day, while the battle raged all round. 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 89 

Wool now re-formed his three hundred and 
ordered his gunners to drill out the eighteen- 
pounder and turn it against Queenston, where 
the British were themselves re-forming for a 
second attack. This was made by two hun- 
dred men of the 49th and York militia, led 
by Colonel John Macdonell, the attorney- 
general of Upper Canada, who was acting as 
aide-de-camp to Brock. Again the Americans 
were driven back. Again the gun was recap- 
tured. Again the British leader was shot at 
the critical moment. Again the attack failed. 
And again the British retreated into Queenston. 

Wool then hoisted the Stars and Stripes 
over the fiercely disputed gun ; and several 
more boatloads of soldiers at once crossed over 
to the Canadian side, raising the American 
total there to sixteen hundred men. With 
this force on the Heights, with a still larger 
force waiting impatiently to cross, with 
twenty-four guns in action, and with the heart 
of the whole defence known to be lying dead 
in Queenston, an American victory seemed to 
be so well assured that a courier was sent 
post-haste to announce the good news both 
at Albany and at Dearborn's headquarters 
just across the Hudson. This done, Stephen 
Van Rensselaer decided to confirm his success 



90 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

by going over to the Canadian side of the 
river himself. Arrived there, he consulted 
the senior regulars and ordered the troops 
to entrench the Heights, fronting Queenston, 
while the rest of his army was crossing. 

But, just when the action had reached 
such an apparently victorious stage, there 
was, first, a pause, and then a slightly ad- 
verse change, which soon became decidedly 
ominous. It was as if the flood tide of in- 
vasion had already passed the full and the 
ebb was setting in. Far off, down-stream, 
at Fort Niagara, the American fire began to 
falter and gradually grow dumb. But at the 
British Fort George opposite the guns were 
served as well as ever, till they had silenced 
the enemy completely. While this was hap- 
pening, the main garrison, now free to act 
elsewhere, were marching out with swinging 
step and taking the road for Queenston 
Heights. Near by, at Lewiston, the American 
twenty-four-gun battery was slackening its 
noisy cannonade, which had been compara- 
tively ineffective from the first ; while the 
single British gun at Vrooman's, vigorous and 
effective as before, was reinforced by two 
most accurate field-pieces under Holcroft in 
Queenston village, where the wounded but 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 91 

undaunted Dennis was rallying his disciplined 
regulars and Loyalist militiamen for another 
fight. On the Heights themselves the Ameri- 
can musketry had slackened while most of the 
men were entrenching ; but the Indian fire 
kept growing closer and more dangerous. 
Up-stream, on the American side of the Falls, 
a half-hearted American detachment had 
been reluctantly sent down by the egregious 
Smyth ; while, on the other side, a hundred 
and fifty eager British were pressing forward 
to join Sheaffe's men from Fort George. 

As the converging British drew near them, 
the Americans on the Heights began to feel 
the ebbing of their victory. The least dis- 
ciplined soon lost confidence and began to 
slink down to the boats ; and very few 
boats returned when once they had reached 
their own side safely. These slinkers natur- 
ally made the most of the dangers they 
had been expecting — a ruthless Indian mas- 
sacre included. The boatmen, nearly all 
civilians, began to desert. Alarming doubts 
and rumours quickly spread confusion through 
the massed militia, who now perceived that 
instead of crossing to celebrate a triumph 
they would have to fight a battle. John 
Lovett, who served with credit in the big 



f 

92 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

American battery, gave a graphic description 
of the scene : * The name of Indian, or the 
sight of the wounded, or the Devil, or some- 
thing else, petrified them. Not a regiment, 
not a company, scarcely a man, would go.' 
Van Rensselaer went through the disinte- 
grating ranks and did his utmost to revive 
the ardour which had been so impetuous only 
an hour before. But he ordered, swore, and 
begged in vain. 

Meanwhile the tide of resolution, hope, and 
coming triumph was rising fast among the 
British. They were the attackers now ; they 
had one distinct objective ; and their leaders 
were men whose lives had been devoted to 
the art of war. Sheaffe took his time. 
Arrived near Queenston, he saw that his three 
guns and two hundred muskets there could 
easily prevent the two thousand disorganized 
American militia from crossing the river ; so 
he wheeled to his right, marched to St David's, 
and then, wheeling to his left, gained the 
Heights two miles beyond the enemy. The 
men from Chippawa marched in and joined 
him. The line of attack was formed, with 
the Indians spread out on the flanks and 
curving forward. The British in Queenston, 
seeing the utter impotence of the Americans 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 93 

who refused to cross over, turned their fire 
against the Heights ; and the invaders at 
once realized that their position had now 
become desperate. 

When Sheaffe struck inland an immediate 
change of the American front was required to 
meet him. Hitherto the Americans on the 
Heights had faced down -stream, towards 
Queenston, at right angles to the river. Now 
they were obliged to face inland, with their 
backs to the river. Wadsworth, the American 
militia brigadier, a very gallant member of a 
very gallant family, immediately waived his 
rank in favour of Colonel Winfield Scott, a 
well-trained regular. Scott and Wadsworth 
then did all that men could do in such a dire 
predicament. But most of the militia became 
unmanageable, some of the regulars were com- 
paratively raw ; there was confusion in front, 
desertion in the rear, and no coherent whole to 
meet the rapidly approaching shock. 

On came the steady British line, with the 
exultant Indians thrown well forward on the 
flanks ; while the indomitable single gun at 
Vrooman's Point backed up Holcroft's two 
guns in Queenston, and the two hundred 
muskets under Dennis joined in this dis- 
tracting fire against the American right till 



94 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the very last moment. The American left 
was in almost as bad a case, because it had 
got entangled in the woods beyond the summit 
and become enveloped by the Indians there. 
The rear was even worse, as men slank off 
from it at every opportunity. The front stood 
fast under Winfield Scott and Wadsworth. 
But not for long. The British brought their 
bayonets down and charged. The Indians 
raised the war-whoop and bounded forward. 
The Americans fired a hurried, nervous, strag- 
gling fusillade ; then broke and fled in wild 
confusion. A very few climbed down the cliff 
and swam across. Not a single boat came 
over from the * petrified ' militia. Some more 
Americans, attempting flight, were killed by 
falling headlong or by drowning. Most of 
them clustered among the trees near the edge 
and surrendered at discretion when Winfield 
Scott, seeing all was lost, waved his handker- 
chief on the point of his sword. 

The American loss was about a hundred 
killed, two hundred wounded, and nearly a 
thousand prisoners. The British loss was 
trifling by comparison, only a hundred and 
fifty altogether. But it included Brock ; and 
his irreparable death alone was thought, by 
friend and foe alike, to have more than re- 



i8i2: QUEENSTON HEIGHTS 95 

dressed the balance. This, indeed, was true 
in a much more pregnant sense than those 
who measure by mere numbers could ever 
have supposed. For genius is a thing apart 
from mere addition and subtraction. It is 
the incarnate spirit of great leaders, whose 
influence raises to its utmost height the 
worth of every follower. So when Brock's 
few stood fast against the invader's many, 
they had his soaring spirit to uphold them 
as well as the soul and body of their own 
disciplined strength. 

Brock's proper fame may seem to be no 
more than that which can be won by any 
conspicuously gallant death at some far out- 
post of a mighty empire. He ruled no rich 
and populous dominions. He commanded no 
well-marshalled host. He fell, apparently de- 
feated, just as his first real battle had begun. 
And yet, despite of this, he was the undoubted 
saviour of a British Canada. Living, he was 
the heart of her preparation during ten long 
years of peace. Dead, he became the in- 
spiration of her defence for two . momentous 
years of wan 



CHAPTER V 

1813: the beaver dams, lake erie, and 

chAteauguay 

The remaining operations of 1812 are of 
quite minor importance. No more than two 
are worthy of being mentioned between the 
greater events before and after them. Both 
were abortive attempts at invasion — one 
across the upper Niagara, the other across the 
frontier south of Montreal. 

After the battle of Queenston Heights 
Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the 
British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer 
in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was 
a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. 
Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no com- 
mander at all. He did, however, succeed in 
getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that 
fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard of 
British interests. After making the most of 
it for a month he ended it on November 19, 
and began manoeuvring round his headquarters 

96 



i8i3 : FRENCHMAN'S CREEK 97 

at Black Rock near Buffalo. After another 
eight days he decided to attack the British 
posts at Red House and Frenchman's Creek, 
which were respectively two and a half and five 
miles from Fort Erie. The whole British line 
of the upper Niagara, from Fort Erie to Chip- 
pawa, a distance of seventeen miles by the 
road along the river, was under the command 
of an excellent young officer. Colonel Bisshopp, 
who had between five and six hundred men 
to hold his seven posts. Fort Erie had the 
largest garrison — only a hundred and thirty 
men. Some forty men of the 49th and two 
small guns were stationed at Red House ; 
while the light company of the 41st guarded 
the bridge over Frenchman's Creek. About 
two o'clock in the morning of the 28th one 
party of Americans pulled across to the ferry 
a mile below Fort Erie, and then, sheering 
off after being fired at by the Canadian 
militia on guard, made for Red House a mile 
and a half lower down. There they landed 
at three and fought a most confused and con- 
fusing action in the dark. Friend and foe 
became mixed up together ; but the result 
was a success for the Americans. Meanwhile, 
the other party landed near Frenchman's 
Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a little, 

W.u.s. G 



98 THE WAR WITH THE STATES i 

and had a fight with the 41st, who could not 
drive the invaders back till reinforcements 
arrived. At daylight the men from Chippawa 
marched into action, Indians began to appear, 
and the whole situation was re-established. 
The victorious British lost nearly a hundred, 
which was more than a quarter of those en- 
gaged. The beaten Americans lost more ; but, 
being in superior numbers, they could the 
better afford it. 

Smyth was greatly disconcerted. But he 
held a boat review on his own side of the river, 
and sent over a summons to Bisshopp demand- 
ing the immediate surrender of Fort Erie * to 
spare the effusion of blood.* Bisshopp re- 
jected the summons. But there was no effu- 
sion of blood in consequence. Smyth planned, 
talked, and manoeuvred for two days more, 
and then tried to make his real effort on the 
1st of December. By the time it was light 
enough for the British to observe him he had 
fifteen hundred men in boats, who all wanted 
to go back, and three thousand on shore, who 
all refused to go forward. He then held a 
council of war, which advised him to wait 
for a better chance. This closed the cam- 
paign with what, according to Porter, one of 
his own generals, was * a scene of confusion 



i8i3 : ST REGIS 99 

difficult to describe : about four thousand 
men without order or restraint discharging^ 
their muskets in every direction.* Next day 
* The Committee of Patriotic Citizens ' under- 
took to rebuke Smyth. But he retorted, not 
without reason, that * the affair at Queenston 
is a caution against relying on crowds who 
go to the banks of the Niagara to look at a 
battle as on a theatrical exhibition.' 

The other abortive attempt at invasion 
was made by the advance-guard of the com- 
mander-in-chief's own army. Dearborn had 
soon found out that his disorderly masses at 
Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field. 
But, four months after the declaration of war, 
a small detachment, thrown forward from 
his new headquarters at Plattsburg on Lake 
Champlain, did manage to reach St Regis, 
where the frontier first meets the St Law- 
rence, near the upper end of Lake St Francis, 
sixty miles south-west of Montreal. Here 
the Americans killed Lieutenant Rototte and 
a sergeant, and took the little post, which 
was held by a few voyageurs. Exactly a 
month later, on November 23, these Americans 
were themselves defeated and driven back 
again. Three days earlier than this a much 
stronger force of Americans had crossed the 



v^ 



100 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

frontier at Odelltown, just north of which 
there was a British blockhouse beside the 
river La Colle, a muddy Httle western tributary 
of the Richelieu, forty-seven miles due south 
of Montreal. The Americans fired into each 
other in the dark, and afterwards retired 
before the British reinforcements. Dearborn 
then put his army into winter quarters at 
Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded 
campaign against Montreal before it had well 
begun. 

The American government was much dis- 
appointed at the failure of its efforts to make 
war without armies. But it found a con- 
venient scapegoat in Hull, who was far less 
to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet. 
These politicians had been wrong in every 
important particular — ^wrong about the atti- 
tude of the Canadians, wrong about the whole 
plan of campaign, wrong in separating Hull 
from Dearborn, wrong in not getting men-of- 
war afloat on the Lakes, wrong, above all, in 
trusting to untrained and undisciplined levies. 
To complete their mortification, the ridicu- 
lous gunboats, in which they had so firmly 
believed, had done nothing but divert useful 
resources into useless channels ; while, on the 
other hand, the frigates, which they had pro- 



i8i3 : THE AMERICAN ,PLAN loi 

posed to lay up altogether, so as to save them- 
selves from ' the ruinous folly of a Navy/ had 
already won a brilliant series of duels out at 
sea. 

There were some searchings of heart at 
Washington when all these military and naval 
mis judgments stood revealed. Eustis soon 
followed Hull into enforced retirement ; and 
great plans were made for the campaign of 
1 8 13, which was designed to wipe out the 
disgrace of its predecessor and to effect the 
conquest of Canada for good and all. 

John Armstrong, the new war secretary, 
and William Henry Harrison, the new general 
in the West, were great improvements on 
Eustis and Hull. But, even now, the 
American commanders could not decide on a 
single decisive attack supported by subsidiary 
operations elsewhere. Montreal remained their 
prime objective. But they only struck at it 
last of all. Michilimackinac kept their enemy 
in touch with the West. But they left it com- 
pletely alone. Their general advance ought 
to have been secured by winning the com- 
mand of the Lakes and by the seizure of suit- 
able positions across the line. But they let 
the first blows come from the Canadian side ; 



102 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

and they still left Lake Champlain to shift 
for itself. Their plan was undoubtedly better 
than that of 1812. But it was still all parts 
and no whole. 

The various events were so complicated by 
the overlapping of time and place all along 
the line that we must begin by taking a bird's- 
eye view of them in territorial sequence, start- 
ing from the farthest inland flank and work- 
ing eastward to the sea. Everything we^t of 
Detroit may be left out altogether, because g 
operations did not recommence in that quarter 
until the campaign of the following year. 

In January the British struck successfully 
at Frenchtown, more than thirty miles south 
of Detroit. They struck unsuccessfully, still 
farther south, at Fort Meigs in May and at 
Fort Stephenson in August ; after which they 
had to remain on the defensive, all over the 
Lake Erie region, till their flotilla was anni- 
hilated at Put-in Bay in September and their 
army was annihilated at Moravian Town on 
the Thames in October. In the Lake Ontario 
region the situation was reversed. Here the 
British began badly and ended well. They 
surrendered York in April and Fort George, 
at the mouth of the Niagara, in May. They 
were also repulsed in a grossly mismanaged 

I 



1813: BRITISH VICTORIES 103 

attack on Sackett^s Harbour two days after 
their defeat at Fort George. The opposing 
flotillas meanwhile fought several manoeu- 
vring actions of an indecisive kind, neither 
daring to risk battle and possible annihila- 
tion. But, as the season advanced, the 
British regained their hold on the Niagara 
peninsula by defeating the Americans at 
Stoney Creek and the Beaver Dams in June, 
and by clearing both sides of the Niagara 
river in December. On the upper St Law- 
rence they took Ogdensburg in February. 
They were also completely successful in their 
defence of Montreal. In June they took the 
American gunboats at Isle-aux-Noix on the 
Richelieu ; in July they raided Lake Cham- 
plain ; while in October and November they 
defeated the two divisions of the invading 
army at Chateauguay and Chrystler's Farm. 
The British news from sea also improved as 
the year wore on. The American frigate 
victories began to stop. The Shannon beat 
the Chesapeake, And the shadow of the 
Great Blockade began to fall on the coast of 
the Democratic South. 

The operations of 18 13 are more easily 
understood if taken in this purely territorial 
way. But in following the progress of the 



104 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

war we must take them chronologically. No 
attempt can be made here to describe the 
movements on either side in any detail. An 
outline must suffice. Two points, however, 
need special emphasis, as they are both 
markedly characteristic of the war in general 
and of this campaign in particular. First, 
the combined effect of the American victories 
of Lake Erie and the Thames affords a perfect 
example of the inseparable connection between 
the water and the land. Secondly, the British 
victories at the Beaver Dams and Chateau- 
guay are striking examples of the inter-racial 
connection among the forces that defended 
Canada so well. The Indians did all the real 
fighting at the Beaver Dams. The French 
Canadians fought practically alone at Chateau- 
guay. 

The first move of the invaders in the 
West was designed to recover Detroit and cut 
off Mackinaw. Harrison, victorious over the 
Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811, was now ex- 
pected to strike terror into them once more, 
both by his reputation and by the size of his 
forces. In midwinter he had one wing of his 
army on the Sandusky, under his own com- 
mand, and the other on the Maumee, under 



1813: OGDENSBURG 105 

Winchester, a rather commonplace general. 
At Frenchtown stood a little British post 
defended by fifty Canadians and a hundred 
Indians. Winchester moved north to drive 
these men away from American soil. But 
Procter crossed the Detroit from Amherst- 
burg on the ice, and defeated Winchester's 
thousand whites with his own five hundred 
whites and five hundred Indians at dawn on 
January 22, making Winchester a prisoner. 
Procter was unable to control the Indians, 
who ran wild. They hated the Westerners 
who made up Winchester's force, as the men 
who had deprived them of their lands, and 
they now wreaked their vengeance on them 
for some time before they could be again 
brought within the bounds of civilized warfare. 
After the battle Procter retired to Amherst- 
burg ; Harrison began to build Fort Meigs 
on the Maumee ; and a pause of three months 
followed all over the western scene. 

But winter warfare was also going on else- 
where. A month after Procter's success, Pre- 
vost, when passing through Prescott, on the 
upper St Lawrence, reluctantly gave Colonel 
Macdonell of Glengarry provisional leave to 
attack Ogdensburg, from which the Americans 
were forwarding supplies to Sackett's Harbour, 



io6 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

sending out raiding parties, and threatening 
the British line of communication to the west. 
No sooner was Prevost clear of Prescott than 
Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and 
one hundred militia over the ice against the 
American fort. His direct assault failed. But 
when he had carried the village at the point 
of the bayonet the garrison ran. Macdonell 
then destroyed the fort, the barracks, and 
four vessels. He also took seventy prisoners, 
eleven guns, and a large supply of stores. 

With the spring cama new movements in 
the West. On May 9 Procter broke camp 
and retired from an unsuccessful siege of 
Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at the south-western 
corner of Lake Erie. He had started this 
siege a fortnight earlier with a thousand whites 
and a thousand Indians under Tecumseh ; and 
at first had seemed likely to succeed. But 
after the first encounter the Indians began to 
leave ; while most of the militia had soon to 
be sent home to their farms to prevent the risk 
of starvation. Thus Procter presently found 
himself with only five hundred effectives in 
face of a much superior and constantly in- 
creasing enemy. In the summer he returned 
to the attack, this time against the American 
position on the lower Sandusky, nearly thirty 



i8i3 : CAPTURE OF YORK 107 

miles east of Fort Meigs. There, on August 2, 
he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his 
light guns could make no breach ; and he lost 
a hundred men in the assault. 

Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved 
up from Plattsburg to Sackett's Harbour, had 
attacked York on April 27 with the help of 
the new American flotilla on Lake Ontario. 
This flotilla was under the personal orders 
of Commodore Chauncey, an excellent officer^ 
who, in the previous September, had been 
promoted from superintendent of the New 
York Navy Yard to commander-in-chief on 
the Lakes. As Chauncey's forte was building 
and organization, he found full scope for his 
peculiar talents at Sackett's Harbour. He 
was also a good leader at sea and thus a 
formidable enemy for the British forces at 
York, where the third-rate Sheaffe was now 
in charge, and where Prevost had paved the 
way for a British defeat by allowing the estab- 
lishment of an exposed navy yard instead of 
keeping all construction safe in Kingston. 
Sheaffe began his mistakes by neglecting to 
mount some of his guns before Dearborn and 
Chauncey arrived, though he knew these 
American commanders might come at any 
moment, and though he also knew how im- 



io8 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

portant it was to save a new British vessel 
that was building at York, because the com- 
mand of the lake might well depend upon her. 
He then made another mistake by standing 
to fight in an untenable position against over- 
whelming odds. He finally retreated with all 
the effective regulars left, less than two hun- 
dred, burning the ship and yard as he passed, 
and leaving behind three hundred militia to 
make their own terms with the enemy. He 
met the light company of the 8th on its way up ^ 
from Kingston and turned it back. With this 
retreat he left the front for good and became 
a commandant of bases, a position often 
occupied by men whose failures are not bad 
enough for courts-martial and whose saving 
qualities are not good enough for any more 
appointments in the field. 

The Americans lost over two hundred men 
by an explosion in a British battery at York 
just as Sheaffe was marching ofi. Forty 
British had also been blown up in one of the 
forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to 
have been a slack inspector of powder-maga- 
zines. But the Americans, who naturally 
suspected other things than slack inspection, 
thought a mine had been sprung on them after 
the fight was over. They consequently swore 



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i8i3 : FORT GEORGE 109 

revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted 
several private houses, and carried off books 
from the public library as well as plate from 
the church. Chauncey, much to his credit, 
afterwards sent back all the books and plate 
he could recover. 

Exactly a month later, on May 27, Chauncey 
and Dearborn appeared off Fort George, after 
a run back to Sackett's Harbour in the mean- 
time. Vincent, Sheaffe's successor in charge 
of Upper Canada, had only a thousand regulars 
and four hundred militia there. Dearborn 
had more than four times as many men ; and 
Perry, soon to become famous on Lake Erie, 
managed the naval part of landing them. 
The American men-of-war brought the long, 
low, fiat ground of Mississauga Point under 
an ir^'esistible cross-fire while three thousand 
troops were landing on the beach below the 
covering bluffs. No support could be given 
to the opposing British force by the fire of 
Fort George, as the village of Newark inter- 
vened. So Vincent had to fight it out in the 
open. On being threatened with annihila- 
tion he retired towards Burlington, with- 
drawing the garrison of Fort George, and 
sending orders for all the other troops on the 
Niagara to follow by the shortest line. He 



no THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

had lost a third of the whole force defending 
the Niagara frontier, both sides of which 
were now possessed by the Americans. But 
by nightfall on May 29 he was standing at 
bay, with his remaining sixteen hundred men, 
in an excellent strategical position on the 
Heights, half-way between York and Fort 
George, in touch with Dundas Street, the 
main road running east and west, and beside 
Burlington Bay, where he hoped to meet the 
British flotilla commanded by Yeo. 

Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo was an ener- 
getic and capable young naval officer of thirty, 
whom the Admiralty had sent out with a few 
seamen to take command on the Lakes under 
Prevost's orders. He had been only seven- 
teen days at Kingston when he sailed out with 
Prevost, on May 27, to take advantage of 
Chauncey's absence at the western end of the 
lake. Arrived before Sackett^s Harbour, the 
attack was planned for the 29th. The land- 
ing force of seven hundred and fifty men was 
put in charge of Baynes, the adjutant-general, 
a man only too well fitted to do the * dirty 
work ' of the general staff under a weak 
commander-in-chief like Prevost. All went 
wrong at Sackett^s Harbour. Prevost was 
* present but not in command ' ; Baynes 




SIR JAMES YEO 
I'luiii u puiUaiL b)' A. Buck 



J 



1813: STONEY CREEK iii 

landed at the wrong place. Nevertheless, 
the British regulars scattered the American 
militiamen, pressed back the American regu- 
lars, set fire to the barracks, and halted in 
front of the fort. The Americans, thinking 
the day was lost, set fire to their stores and 
to Chauncey's new ships. Then Baynes and 
Prevost suddenly decided to retreat. Baynes 
explained to Prevost, and Prevost explained 
in a covering dispatch to the British govern- 
ment, that the fleet could not co-operate, that 
the fort could not be taken, and that the land- 
ing party was not strong enough. But, if 
this was true, why did they make an attack 
at all ; and, if it was not true, why did they 
draw back when success seemed to be assured ? 
Meanwhile Chauncey, after helping to take 
Fort George, had started back for Sackett's 
Harbour ; and Dearborn, left without the 
fleet, had moved on slowly and disjointedly, 
in rear of Vincent, with whom he did not regain 
touch for a week. On June 5 the Ameri- 
cans camped at Stoney Creek, five miles from 
the site of Hamilton. The steep zigzagging 
bank of the creek, which formed their front, 
was about twenty feet high. Their right 
rested on a mile-wide swamp, v/hich ran down 
to Lake Ontario. Their left touched the 



112 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Heights, which ran from Burlington to Queens- 
ton. They were also in superior numbers, 
and ought to have been quite secure. But 
they thought so much more of pursuit than 
of defence that they were completely taken , 
by surprise when * 704 firelocks * under Colonel 
Harvey suddenly attacked them just after 
midnight. Harvey, chief staff officer to Vin- 
cent, was a first-rate leader for such daring 
work as this, and his men were all well dis- 
ciplined. But the whole enterprise might 
have failed, for all that. Some of the men 
opened fire too soon, and the nearest Ameri- 
cans began to stand to their arms. But, 
while Harvey ran along re-forming the line, 
Major Plenderleath, with some of Brock's old 
regiment, the 49th, charged straight into the 
American centre, took the guns there, and 
caused so much confusion that Harvey's 
following charge carried all before it. Next 
morning, June 6, the Americans began a 
retreat which was hastened by Yeo's arrival 
on their lakeward flank, by the Indians on 
the Heights, and by Vincent's reinforcements 
in their rear. Not till they reached the 
shelter of Fort George did they attempt to 
make a stand. 

The two armies now faced each other astride 




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SIR JAMES YEO'S FLAGSHIP, 1814 

The vessel carried 1000 men and 102 guns. IL was 190 feeL in 
the keel and 60 feet in the beam, and had a draught of 23 feet 

From the John Ross Robertson CoUeetion, Tor(jnto I'ublic Librar}' 



I 



1813: THE BEAVER DAMS 113 

of the lake-shore road and the Heights. The 
British left advanced post, between Ten and 
Twelve Mile Creeks, was under Major de 
Haren of the 104th, a regiment which, in the 
preceding winter, had marched on snow-shoes 
through the woods all the way from the middle 
of New Brunswick to Quebec. The corre- 
sponding British post inland, near the Beaver 
Dams, was under Lieutenant FitzGibbon of 
the 49th., a cool, quick-witted, and adventur- 
ous Irishman, who had risen from the ranks 
by his own good qualities and Brock's recom- 
mendation. Between him and the Americans 
at Queenston and St David's was a picked 
force of Indian scouts with a son of the great 
chief Joseph Brant. These Indians never 
gave the Americans a minute's rest. They 
were up at all hours, pressing round the flanks, 
sniping the sentries, worrying the outposts, 
and keeping four times their own numbers on 
the perpetual alert. What exasperated the 
Americans even more was the wonderfully 
elusive way in which the Indians would strike 
their blow and then be lost to sight and sound 
the very next moment, if, indeed, they ever 
were seen at all. Finally, this endless skirmish 
with an invisible foe became so harassing that 
the Americans sent out a flying column of six 

w.u.s. H 



114 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

hundred picked men under Colonel Boerstler 
on June 24 to break up FitzGibbon's post at 
the Beaver Dams and drive the Indians out 
of the intervening bush altogether. 

But the American commanders had not 
succeeded in hiding their preparations from 
the vigilant eyes of the Indian scouts or from 
the equally attentive ears of Laura Secord, 
the wife of an ardent U. E. Loyalist, James 
Secord, who v/as still disabled by the wounds 
he had received when fighting under Brock's 
command at Queenston Heights. Early in 
the morning of the 23rd, while Laura Secord 
was going out to milk the cows, she over- 
heard some Americans talking about the 
surprise in store for FitzGibbon next day. 
Without giving the slightest sign she quietly 
drove the cattle in behind the nearest fence, 
hid her milk-pail, and started to thread her 
perilous way through twenty miles of be- 
wildering bypaths to the Beaver Dams. 
Keeping off the beaten tracks and always in 
the shadow of the full-leaved trees, she stole 
along through the American lines, crossed the 
no -man's -land between the two desperate 
enemies, and managed to get inside the ever- 
shifting fringe of Indian scouts without being 
seen by friend or foe. The heat was intense ; 



1813: THE BEAVER DAMS 115 

and the whole forest steamed with it after the 
tropical rain. But she held her course without 
a pause, over the swollen streams on fallen 
tree-trunks, through the dense underbrush, 
and in and out of the mazes of the forest, 
where a bullet might come from either side 
without a moment's warning. As she neared 
the end of her journey a savage yell told her 
she was at last discovered by the Indians. 
She and they were on the same side ; but she 
had hard work to persuade them that she 
only wished to warn FitzGibbon. Then came 
what, to a lesser patriot, would have been a 
crowning disappointment. For when, half 
dead with fatigue, she told him her story, she 
found he had already heard it from the scouts. 
But just because this forest alment was no real 
disappointment to her, it makes her the Anglo- 
Canadian heroine whose fame for bravery in 
war is worthiest of being remembered with 
that of her French-Canadian sister, Madeleine 
de Vercheres.^ 

Boerstler's six hundred had only ten miles 
to go in a straight line. But all the thickets, 
woods, creeks, streams, and swamps were 
closely beset by a body of expert, persistent 

1 For Madeleine de Vercheres see The Fighting Governor m this 
Series. 



ii6 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Indians, who gradually increased from two 
hundred and fifty to four hundred men. The 
Americans became discouraged and bewil- 
dered ; and when FitzGibbon rode up at the 
head of his redcoats they were ready to give 
in. The British posts were all in excellent 
touch with each other ; and de Haren arrived 
in time to receive the actual surrender. He 
was closely followed by the 2nd Lincoln 
Militia under Colonel Clark, and these again 
by Colonel Bisshopp with the whole of the 
advanced guard. But it was the Indians alone 
who won the fight, as FitzGibbon generously 
acknowledged : * Not a shot was fired on our 
side by any but the Indians. They beat the 
American detachment into a state of terror, 
and the only share I claim is taking advan- 
tage of a favourable moment to offer protec- 
tion from the tomahawk and scalping knife.' 

June was a lucky month for the British at 
sea as well as on the land ; and its ' Glorious 
First,' so called after Howe's victory nineteen 
years before, now became doubly glorious in 
a way which has a special interest for Canada. 
The American frigate Chesapeake was under 
orders to attack British supply-ships entering 
Canadian waters ; and the victorious British 
frigate Shannon was taken out of action and 




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4 



1813: SHANNON AND CHESAPEAKE 117 

into a Canadian port by a young Canadian 
in the Royal Navy. 

The Chesapeake had a new captain, Law- 
rence, with new young officers. She carried 
fifty more men than the British frigate Shan- 
non. But many of her ship's company were 
new to her, on recommissioning in May ; and 
some were comparatively untrained for ser- 
vice on board a man-of-war. The frigates 
themselves were practically equal in size and 
armament. But Captain Broke had been in 
continuous command of the Shannon for seven 
years and had trained his crew into the utmost 
perfection of naval gunnery. The vessels met 
off Boston in full view of many thousands of 
spectators. Not one British shot flew high. 
Every day in the Shannon's seven years of pre- 
paration told in that fight of only fifteen 
minutes ; and when Broke led his boarders 
over the Chesapeake's side her fate had been 
sealed already. The Stars and Stripes v/ere 
soon replaced by the Union Jack. Then, 
with Broke severely wounded and his first 
lieutenant killed, the command fell on Lieu- 
tenant Wallis, who sailed both vessels into 
Halifax. This young Canadian, afterwards 
known as Admiral -of -the -Fleet Sir Provo 
Wallis, lived to become the longest of all 



ii8 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

human links between the past and present of 
the Navy. He was by far the last survivor 
of those officers who were specially exempted 
from technical retirement on account of having 
held any ship or fleet command during the 
Great War that ended on the field of Waterloo. 
He was born before Napoleon had been heard 
of. He went through a battle before the 
death of Nelson. He outlived Wellington by 
forty years. His name stood on the Active 
List for all but the final decade of the 
nineteenth century. And, as an honoured 
centenarian, he is vividly remembered by 
many who were still called young a century 
after the battle that brought him into 
fame. 

The summer campaign on the Niagara fron- 
tier ended with three minor British successes. 
Fort Schlosser was surprised on July 5. On 
the nth Bisshopp lost his life in destroying 
Black Rock. And on August 24 the Ameri- 
cans were driven in under the guns of Fort 
George. After this there was a lull which 
lasted throughout the autumn. 

Down by the Montreal frontier there were 
three corresponding British successes. On 
June 3 Major Taylor of the looth captured 



i8i3 : LAKE ERIE 119 

two American gunboats, the Growler and the 
Eagle, which had come to attack Isle-aux- 
Noix in the Richelieu river, and renamed 
them the Broke and the Shannon. Early 
in August Captains Pring and Everard, of 
the Navy, and Colonel Murray with nine 
hundred soldiers, raided Lake Champlain. 
They destroyed the barracks, yard, and stores 
at Plattsburg and sent the American militia 
flying home. But a still more effective blow 
was struck on the opposite side of Lake Cham- 
plain, at Burlington, where General Hampton 
was preparing the right wing of his new army 
of invasion. Stores, equipment, barracks, and 
armaments were destroyed to such an ex- 
tent that Hampton's preparations were set 
back till late in the autumn. The left wing 
of the same army was at Sackett's Harbour, 
under Dearborn's successor. General Wilkin- 
son, whose plan was to take Kingston, go 
down the St Lawrence, meet Hampton, who 
was to come up from the south, and then make 
a joint attack with him on Montreal. 

In September the scene of action shifted 
to the West, where the British were trying to 
keep the command of Lake Erie, while the 
Americans were trying to wrest it from them. 
Captain Oliver Perry, a first-rate American 



120 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

naval officer of only twenty-eight, was at 
Presqu^sle (now' Erie) completing his flotilla. 
He had his troubles, of course, especially with 
the militia garrison, who would not do their 
proper tour of duty. * I tell the boys to go, 
but the boys won't go,' was the only report 
forthcoming from one of several worthless 
colonels. A still greater trouble for Perry 
was getting his vessels over the bar. This 
had to be done without any guns on board, 
and with the cumbrous aid of * camels,' which 
are any kind of air-tanks made fast to the 
sides low down, in order to raise the hull as 
much as possible. But, luckily for Perry, his 
opponent. Captain Barclay of the Royal Navy, 
an energetic and capable young officer of 
thirty-two, was called upon to face worse 
troubles still. Barclay was, indeed, the first 
to get afloat. But he had to give up the 
blockade of Presqu'isle, and so let Perry out, 
because he had the rawest of crews, the 
scantiest of equipment, and nothing left to 
eat. Then, when he ran back to Amherstburg, 
he found Procter also facing a state of semi- 
starvation, while thousands of Indian families 
were clamouring for food. Thus there was 
no other choice but either to fight or starve ; 
for there was not the slightest chance of re- 



i8i3 : LAKE ERIE 121 

plenishing stores unless the line of the lake 
was clear. 

So Barclay sailed out with his six little 
British vessels, armed by the odds and ends 
of whatever ordnance could be spared from 
Amherstburg and manned by almost any 
crews but sailors. Even the flagship Detroit 
had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammuni- 
tion was likewise very scarce, and so defective 
that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a 
pistol. Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, 
partly manned by drafts from Harrison's 
army. But, on the whole, the odds in his 
favour were fairly shown by the number of 
vessels in the respective flotillas, nine American 
against the British six. 

Barclay had only thirty miles to make in a 
direct south-easterly line from Amherstburg 
to reach Perry at Put-in Bay in the Bass 
Islands, where, on the morning of September 
10, the opposing forces met. The battle raged 
for two hours at the very closest quarters till 
Perry's flagship Lawrence struck to Barclay's 
own Detroit. But Perry had previously left 
the Lawrence for the fresh Niagara ; and he 
now bore down on the battered Detroit, which 
had meanwhile fallen foul of the only other 
sizable British vessel, the Queen Charlotte, 



122 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

This was fatal for Barclay. The whole British 
flotilla surrendered after a desperate resistance 
and an utterly disabling loss. From that 
time on to the end of the war Lake Erie re- 
mained completely under American control. 

Procter could hardly help seeing that he was 
doomed to give up the whole Lake Erie region. 
But he lingered and was lost. While Harrison 
was advancing with overwhelming numbers 
Procter was still trying to decide when and 
how to abandon Amherstburg. Then, when i^ 
he did go, he carried with him an inordinate 
amount of baggage ; and he retired so slowly 
that Harrison caught and crushed him near 
Moravian Town, beside the Thames, on the ' 
5th of October. Harrison had three thousand 
exultant Americans in action ; Procter had 
barely a thousand worn-out, dispirited men, 
more than half of them Indians under Tecum- 
seh. The redcoats, spread out in single rank 
at open order, were ridden down by Harrison's 
cavalry, backed by the mass of his infantry. 
The Indians on the inland flank stood longer 
and fought with great determination against 
five times their numbers till Tecumseh fell. 
Then they broke and fled. This was their 
last great fight and Tecumseh was their last 
great leader. 



1813: CHATEAUGUAY 123 

The scene now shifts once more to the 
Montreal frontier, which was being threatened 
by the converging forces of Hampton from 
the south and Wilkinson from the west. Each 
had about seven thousand men; and their 
common objective was the island of Montreal. 
Hampton crossed the line at Odelltown on 
September 20. But he presently moved back 
again ; and it was not till October 21 that he 
began his definite attack by advancing down 
the left bank of the Chateauguay, after open- 
ing communications with Wilkinson, who 
was still near Sackett's Harbour. Hampton 
naturally expected to brush aside all the 
opposition that could be made by the few 
hundred British between him and the St 
Lawrence. But de Salaberry, the commander 
of the British advanced posts, determined to 
check him near La Fourche, where several 
little tributaries of the Chateauguay made a 
succession of good positions, if strengthened 
by abattis and held by trained defenders. 

The British force was very small when 
Hampton began his slow advance ; but * Red 
George ' Macdonell marched to help it just 
in time. Macdonell was commanding a crack 
corps of French Canadians, all picked from 
the best * Select Embodied Militia,' and now, 



124 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

at the end of six months of extra service, 
as good as a battalion of regulars. He had 
hurried to Kingston when Wilkinson had 
threatened it from Sackett's Harbour, Now 
he was urgently needed at Chateauguay. 
* When can you start ? ' asked Prevost, who 
was himself on the point of leaving Kingston 
for Chateauguay. * Directly the men have 
finished their dinners, sir ! ' * Then follow 
me as quickly as you can ! ' said Prevost as 
he stepped on board his vessel. There were 
210 miles to go. A day was lost in collect- 
ing boats enough for this sudden emergency. 
Another day was lost en route by a gale so 
terrific that even the French-Canadian voya- 
geurs were unable to face it. The rapids, 
where so many of Amherst *s men had been 
drowned in 1769, were at their very worst ; 
and the final forty miles had to be made 
overland by marching all night through dense 
forest and along a particularly difficult trail. 
Yet Macdonell got into touch with de Sala- 
berry long before Prevost, to whom he had 
the satisfaction of reporting later in the day : 
' All correct and present, sir ; not one man 
missing 1 ' 

The advanced British forces under de 
Salaberry were now, on October 25, the eve 



i8i3 : ChAtEAUGUAY 125 

of battle, occupying the left, or north, bank 
of the Chateauguay, fifteen miles south of the 
Cascade Rapids of the St Lawrence, twenty- 
five miles south-west of Caughnawaga, and 
thirty-five miles south-west of Montreal. Im- 
mediately in rear of these men under de Sala- 
berry stood Macdonell's command ; while, in 
more distant support, nearer to Montreal, 
stood various posts under General de Watte- 
ville, with whom Prevost spent that night 
and most of the 26th, the day on which the 
battle was fought. 

As Hampton came on with his cumbrous 
American thousands de Salaberry felt justifi- 
able confidence in his own well-disciplined 
French - Canadian hundreds. He and his 
brothers were officers in the Imperial Army. 
His Voltigeurs were regulars. The supporting 
Fencibles were also regulars, and of ten years' 
standing. Macdonell's men were practically 
regulars. The so-called ' Select Militia ' pre- 
sent had been permanently embodied for 
eighteen months ; and the only real militia- 
men on the scene of action, most of whom 
never came under fire at all, had already been 
twice embodied for service in the field. The 
British total present was 1590, of whom^ less 
than a quarter were militiamen and Indians. 



126 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

But the whole firing line comprised no more 
than 460, of whom only 66 were militiamen 
and only 22 were Indians. The Indian total 
was about one-tenth of the whole. The Eng- 
lish-speaking total was about one-twentieth. 
It is therefore perfectly right to say that the 
battle of Chateauguay was practically fought 
and won by French-Canadian regulars against 
American odds of four to one. 

De Salaberry's position was peculiar. The 
head of his little column faced the head of 
Hampton's big column on a narrow front, 
bounded on his own left by the river Cha- 
teauguay and on his own right by woods, 
into which Hampton was afraid to send his 
untrained men. But, crossing a right-angled 
bend of the river, beyond de Salaberry's left 
front, was a ford, while in rear of de Sala- 
berry's own column was another ford which 
Hampton thought he could easily take with 
fifteen hundred men under Purdy, as he had 
no idea of Macdonell's march and no doubt 
of being able to crush de Salaberry's other 
troops between his own five thousand attack- 
ing from the front and Purdy's fifteen hundred 
attacking from the rear. Purdy advanced 
overnight, crossed to the right bank of the 
Chateauguay, by the ford clear of de Sala- 




CHARL?:S DE SALA BERRY 
From a portrait in the Dominion Archives 



i 



i8i3 : CHATEAUGUAY 127 

berry^s front, and made towards the ford in 
de Salaberry's rear. But his men lost their 
way in the dark and found themselves, not 
m rear of, but opposite to, and on the left 
flank of, de Salaberry's column in the morning. 
They drove in two of de Salaberry's companies, 
which were protecting his left flank on the 
right, or what was now Purdy's, side of the 
river ; but they were checked by a third, 
which Macdonell sent forward, across the rear 
ford, at the same time that he occupied this 
rear ford himself. Purdy and Hampton had 
now completely lost touch with one another. 
Purdy was astounded to see Macdonell's main 
body of redcoats behind the rear ford. He 
paused, waiting for support from Hampton, 
who was still behind the front ford. Hamp- 
ton paused, waiting for him to take the rear 
ford, now occupied by Macdonell. De Sala- 
berry mounted a huge tree-stump and at 
once saw his opportunity. Holding back 
Hampton's crowded column with his own 
front, which fought under cover of his first 
abattis, he wheeled the rest of his men into 
line to the left and thus took Purdy in flank. 
Macdonell was out of range behind the rear 
ford ; but he played his part by making 
his buglers sound the advance from several 



128 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

different quarters, while his men, joined by de 
Salaberry's militiamen and by the Indians in 
the bush, cheered vociferously and raised the 
war-whoop. This was too much for Purdy's 
fifteen hundred. They broke in confusion, 
ran away from the river into the woods under 
a storm of bullets, fired into each other, and 
finally disappeared. Hampton's attack on de 
Salaberry's first abattis then came to a full 
stop ; after which the whole American army 
retired beaten from the field. 

Ten days after Chateauguay dilatory Wilkin- 
son, tired of waiting for defeated Hampton, 
left the original rendezvous at French Creek, 
fifty miles below Sackett's Harbour. Like 
Dearborn in 1812, he began his campaign 
just as the season was closing. But, again 
like Dearborn, he had the excuse of being 
obliged to organize his army in the middle 
of the war. Four days later again, on Nov- 
ember 9, Brown, the successful defender of 
Sackett's Harbour against Prevost's attack 
in May, was landed at Williamsburg, on the 
Canadian side, with two thousand men, to 
clear the twenty miles down to Cornwall, 
opposite the rendezvous at St Regis, where 
Wilkinson expected to find Hampton ready to 
join him for the combined attack on Montreal. 



i8i3 : CHRYSTLER'S FARM 129 

But Brown had to reckon with Dennis, the 
first defender of Queenston, who now com- 
manded the Httle garrison of Cornwall, and 
ivho disputed every inch of the way by 
breaking the bridges and resisting each suc- 
:essive advance till Brown was compelled to 
deploy for attack. Two days were taken up 
ivith these harassing manoeuvres, during which 
3-nother two thousand Americans were landed 
it Williamsburg under Boyd, who immediately 
:ound himself still more harassed in rear than 
Brown had been in front. 

This new British force in Boyd^s rear was 
jnly a thousand strong ; but, as it included 
ivery human element engaged in the defence 
)f Canada, it has a quite peculiar interest of 
ts own. Afloat, it included bluejackets of the 
Royal Navy, men of the Provincial Marine, 
French-Canadian voyageurs, and Anglo-Cana- 
iian boatmen from the trading-posts, all under 
I first-rate fighting seaman. Captain Mulcaster, 
R.N. Ashore, under a good regimental leader, 
Dolonel Morrison — whose chief staff officer was 
Harvey, of Stoney Creek renown — it included 
Emperial regulars, Canadian regulars of both 
races, French-Canadian and Anglo-Canadian 
nilitiamen, and a party of Indians, 

Early on the iith Brown had arrived at 

W.U.S. T 



130 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Cornwall with his two thousand Americans, 
Wilkinson was starting down from Williams- 
burg in boats with three thousand more, and 
Boyd was starting down ashore with eighteen 
hundred. But Mulcaster's vessels pressed in 
on Wilkinson's rear, while Morrison pressed in 
on Boyd's. Wilkinson then ordered Boyd to 
turn about and drive off Morrison, while he 
hurried his own men out of reach of Mulcaster, 
whose armed vessels could not follow down the 
rapids. Boyd thereupon attacked Morrison, 
and a stubborn fight ensued at Chrystler's 
Farm. The field was of the usual type : woods 
on one flank, water on the other, and a more 
or less fiat clearing in the centre. Boyd tried 
hard to drive his wedge in between the British 
and the river. But Morrison foiled him in 
manoeuvre ; and the eight hundred British 
stood fast against their eighteen hundred 
enemies all along the line. Boyd then with- 
drew, having lost four hundred men ; and 
Morrison's remaining six hundred effectives 
slept on their hard-won ground. 

Next morning the energetic Morrison re- 
sumed his pursuit. But the campaign against 
Montreal was already over. Wilkinson had 
found that Hampton had started back for 
Lake Champlain while the battle was in pro- 



i8i3 : THE NIAGARA FRONTIER 131 

gress ; so he landed at St Regis, just inside 
his own country, and went into winter quarters 
at French Mills on the Salmon river. 

In December the scene of strife changed 
back again to the Niagara, where the American 
commander, M^Clure, decided to evacuate 
Fort George. At dusk on the loth he ordered 
four hundred women and children to be turned 
out of their homes at Newark into the biting 
midwinter cold, and then burnt the whole 
settlement down to the ground. If he had 
intended to hold the position he might have 
been justified in burning Newark, under more 
humane conditions, because this village un- 
doubtedly interfered with the defensive fire 
of Fort George. But, as he was giving up Fort 
George, his act was an entirely wanton deed of 
shame. 

Meanwhile the new British general, Gordon 
Drummond, second in ability to Brock alone, 
was hurrying to the Niagara frontier. He 
was preceded by Colonel Murray, who took 
possession of Fort George on the 12th, the 
day M^Clure crossed the Niagara river. Murray 
at once made a plan to take the American 
Fort Niagara opposite ; and Drummond at 
once approved it for immediate execution. On 



132 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the night of the i8th six hundred men were 
landed on the American side three miles up 
the river. At four the next morning Murray- 
led them down to the fort, rushing the sentries 
and pickets by the way with the bayonet 
in dead silence. He then told off two hun- 
dred men to take a bastion at the same 
time that he was to lead the other four hun- 
dred straight through the main gate, which 
he knew would soon be opened to let the 
reliefs pass out. Everything worked to perfec- 
tion. When the reliefs came out they were 
immediately charged and bayoneted, as were 
the first astonished men off duty who ran 
out of their quarters to see what the matter 
was. A stiff hand-to-hand fight followed. But 
every American attempt to form was instantly 
broken up ; and presently the whole place 
surrendered. Drummond, who was delighted 
with such an excellent beginning, took care 
to underline the four significant words refer- 
ring to the enemy's killed and wounded — 
all with the bayonet. This was done in no 
mere vulgar spirit of bravado, still less in 
abominable bloody-mindedness. It was the 
soldierly recognition of a particularly gallant 
feat of arms, carried out with such conspicu- 
ously good discipline that its memory is 




SIR GORDON DRUMMOND 
From the John Robs Robertson Collection, Toronto Public Library 



i8i3 : THE NIAGARA FRONTIER 133 

cherished, even to the present day, by the 
1 00th, afterwards raised again as the Royal 
Canadians, and now known as the Prince of 
Wales's Leinster regiment. A facsimile of 
Drummond's underlined order is one of the 
most highly honoured souvenirs in the officers' 
mess. 

Not a moment was lost in following up 
this splendid feat of arms. The Indians drove 
the American militia out of Lewiston, which 
the advancing redcoats burnt to the ground. 
Fort Schlosser fell next, then Black Rock, 
and finally Buffalo. Each was laid in ashes. 
Thus, before 18 13 ended, the whole American 
side of the Niagara was nothing but one 
long, bare line of blackened desolation, with 
the sole exception of Fort Niagara, which re- 
mained secure in British hands until the war 
was over. 



CHAPTER VI 

1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND 
THE GREAT BLOCKADE 

In the closing phase of the struggle by land 
and sea the fortunes of war may, with the 
single exception of Plattsburg, be most con- 
veniently followed territorially, from one point 
to the next, along the enormous irregu- 
lar curve of five thousand miles which was 
the scene of operations. This curve begins 
at Prairie du Chien, where the Wisconsin 
joins the Mississippi, and ends at New Orleans, 
where the Mississippi is about to join the sea. 
It runs easterly along the Wisconsin, across 
to the Fox, into Lake Michigan, across to 
Mackinaw, eastwards through Lakes Huron, 
Erie, and Ontario, down the St Lawrence, 
round to Halifax, round from there to Maine, 
and thence along the whole Atlantic coast, 
south and west-about into the Gulf of Mexico. 
The blockade of the Gulf of Mexico was an 
integral part of the British plan. But the 



i8i4 : THE WEST 135 

battle of New Orleans, which was a complete 
disaster for the British arms, stands quite 
outside the actual war, since it was fought on 
January 8, 18 15, more than two weeks after 
the terms of peace had been settled by the 
Treaty of Ghent. This peculiarity about its 
date, taken in conjunction with its extreme 
remoteness from the Canadian frontier, puts 
it beyond the purview of the present chronicle. 
All the decisive actions of the campaign 
proper were fought within two months. They 
began at Prairie du Chien in July and ended 
at Plattsburg in September. Plattsburg is the 
one exception to the order of place. The 
tide of war and British fortune flowed east 
and south to reach its height at Washing- 
ton in August. It turned at Plattsburg in 
September. 

Neither friend nor foe went west in 18 13. 
But in April 1814 Colonel M^Douall set out 
with ninety men, mostly of the Newfound- 
land regiment, to reinforce Mackinaw. He 
started from the little depot which had been 
established on the Nottawasaga, a river flow- 
ing into the Georgian Bay and accessible by 
the overland trail from York. 

After surmounting the many difficulties of 



136 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the inland route which he had to take in 
order to avoid the Americans in the Lake Erie 
region, and after much hard work against the 
Lake Huron ice, he at last reached Mackinaw 
on the 1 8th of May. Some good fighting 
Indians joined him there ; and towards the 
end of June he felt strong enough to send 
Colonel M^Kay against the American post 
at Prairie du Chien. M'Kay arrived at this 
post in the middle of July and captured the 
whole position — fort, guns, garrison, and a 
vessel on the Mississippi. 

Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under 
Croghan, the American officer who had re- 
pulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson the year 
before, were making for Mackinaw itself. 
They did some private looting at the Sault, 
burnt the houses at St Joseph's Island, and 
landed in full force at Mackinaw on the 4th of 
August. M^Douall had less than two hundred 
men, Indians included. But he at once marched 
out to the attack and beat the Americans 
back to their ships, which immediately sailed 
away. The British thenceforth commanded 
the whole three western lakes until the war 
was over. 

The Lake Erie region remained quite as de- 
cisively commanded by the Americans. They 



1814: CHIPPAWA 137 

actually occupied only the line of the Detroit. 
But they had the power to cut any communi- 
cations which the British might try to estab- 
lish along the north side of the lake. They 
had suffered a minor reverse at Chatham in 
the previous December. But in March they 
more than turned the tables by defeating 
Basden's attack in the Longwoods at Dela- 
ware, near London ; and in October seven 
hundred of their mounted men raided the line 
of the Thames and only just stopped short of 
the Grand River, the western boundary of the 
Niagara peninsula. 

The Niagara frontier, as before, was the 
scene of desperate strife. The Americans were 
determined to wrest it from the British, 
and they carefully trained their best troops 
for the effort. Their prospects seemed bright, 
as the whole of Upper Canada was suffer- 
ing from want of men and means, both civil 
and military. Drummond, the British com- 
mander-in-chief there, felt very anxious not 
only about the line of the Niagara but even 
about the neck of the whole peninsula, from 
Burlington westward to Lake Erie. He had 
no more than 4400 troops, all told ; and he 
was obliged to place them so as to be ready 
for an attack either from the Niagara or 



138 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

from Lake Erie, or from both together. 
Keeping his base at York with a thousand 
men, he formed his line with its right on 
Burlington and its left on Fort Niagara. He 
had 500 men at Burlington, 1000 at Fort 
George, and 700 at Fort Niagara. The rest 
were thrown well forward, so as to get into 
immediate touch with any Americans advanc- 
ing from the south. There were 300 men at 
Queenston, 500 at Chippawa, 150 at Fort 
Erie, and 250 at Long Point on Lake Erie. 

Brown, the American general who had 
beaten Prevost at Sackett's Harbour and who 
had now superseded Wilkinson, had made hi^ 
advanced field base at Buffalo. His total 
force was not much more than Drummond^s. 
But it was all concentrated into a single strik- 
ing body which possessed the full initiative 
of manoeuvre and attack. On July 3 Brown 
crossed the Niagara to the Canadian side. The 
same day he took Fort Erie from its little 
garrison ; and at once began to make it a 
really formidable work, as the British found 
out to their cost later on. Next day he ad- 
vanced down the river road to Street's Creek. 
On hearing this. General Riall, Drummond's 
second-in-command, gathered two thousand 
men and advanced against Brown, who had 

It 



1814: CHIPPAWA 139 

recommenced his own advance with four 
thousand. They met on the 5th, between 
Street's Creek and the Chippawa river. Riall 
at once sent six hundred men, including 
all his Indians and militia, against more 
than twice their number of American militia, 
who were in a strong position on the inland 
flank. The Canadians went forward in excel- 
lent style and the Americans broke and fled 
in wild confusion. Seizing such an appar- 
ently good chance, Riall then attacked the 
American regulars with his own, though the 
odds he had to face here were more than 
three against two. The opposing lines met 
face to face unflinchingly. The Americans, 
who had now been trained and disciplined 
by proper leaders, refused to yield an inch. 
Their two regular brigadiers, Winfield Scott 
and Ripley, kept them well in hand, man- 
oeuvred their surplus battalions to the best 
advantage, overlapped the weaker British 
flank, and won the day. The British loss was 
five hundred, or one in four: the American 
four hundred, or only one in ten. 

Brown then turned RialPs flank, by crossing 
the Chippawa higher up, and prepared for the 
crowning triumph of crushing Drummond. 
He proposed a joint attack with Chauncey on 



140 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Forts Niagara and George. But Chauncey 
happened to be ill at the time ; he had not yet 
defeated Yeo ; and he strongly resented being 
made apparently subordinate to Brown. So 
the proposed combination failed at the critical 
moment. But, for the eighteen days between 
the battle of Chippawa on the 5th of July 
and Brown's receipt of Chauncey's refusal on 
the 23rd, the Americans carried all before 
them, right up to the British line that ran 
along the western end of Lake Ontario, from 
Fort Niagara to Burlington. During this 
period no great operations took place. But 
two minor incidents served to exasperate feel- 
ings on both sides. Eight Canadian traitors 
were tried and hanged at Ancaster near Bur- 
lington ; and Loyalists openly expressed their 
regret that Willcocks and others had escaped 
the same fate. Willcocks had been the ring- 
leader of the parliamentary opposition to 
Brock in 18 12; and had afterwards been ex- 
ceedingly active on the American side, harry- 
ing every Loyalist he and his raiders could 
lay their hands on. He ended by cheating 
the gallows, after all, as he fell in a skirmish 
towards the end of the present campaign on 
the Niagara frontier. The other exasperating 
incident was the burning of St David's on 



1814: LUNDY'S LANE 141 

July 19 by a Colonel Stone ; partly because 
it was a * Tory village ' and partly because 
the American militia mistakenly thought that 
one of their officers, Brigadier-General Swift, 
had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had 
given quarter. 

When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last 
received Chauncey's disappointing answer, he 
immediately stopped manoeuvring along the 
lower Niagara and prepared to execute an 
alternative plan of marching diagonally across 
the Niagara peninsula straight for the British 
position at Burlington. To do this he con- 
centrated at the Chippawa on the 24th. But 
by the time he was ready to put his plan into 
execution, on the morning of the 25th, he 
found himself in close touch with the British 
in his immediate front. Their advanced guard 
of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson, 
had just taken post at Lundy's Lane, near the 
Falls. Their main body, under Riall, was 
clearing both banks of the lower Niagara. 
And Drummond himself had just arrived at 
Fort Niagara. Neither side knew the inten- 
tions of the other. But as the British were 
clearing the whole country up to the Falls, 
and as the Americans were bent on striking 
diagonally inland from a point beside the 



142 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Falls, it inevitably happened that each met 
the other at Lundy's Lane, which runs inland 
from the Canadian side of the Falls, at right 
angles to the river, and therefore between the 
two opposing armies. 

When Drummond, hurrying across from 
York, landed at Fort Niagara in the early 
morning of the fateful 25th, he found that the 
orders he had sent over on the 23rd were 
already being carried out, though in a slightly 
modified form. Colonel Tucker was marching 
off from Fort Niagara to Lewiston, which he 
took without opposition. Then, first making 
sure that the heights beyond were also clear, 
he crossed over the Niagara to Queenston, 
where his men had dinner with those who had 
marched up on the Canadian side from Fort 
George. Immediately after dinner half the 
total sixteen hundred present marched back 
to garrison Forts George and Niagara, while 
the other half marched forward, up-stream, 
on the Canadian side, with Drummond, to- 
wards Lundy^s Lane, whither Riall had pre- 
ceded them with reinforcements for the 
advanced guard under Colonel Pearson. In 
the meantime Brown had heard about the 
taking of Lewiston, and, fearing that the British 
might take Fort Schlosser too, had at once 



i8i4 : LUNDY'S LANE 143 

given up all idea of his diagonal march on 
Burlington and had decided to advance straight 
against Queenston instead. Thus both the 
American and the British main bodies were 
marching on Lundy's Lane from opposite 
sides and in successive detachments through- 
out that long, intensely hot, midsummer after- 
noon. 

Presently Riall got a report saying that the 
Americans were advancing in one massed 
force instead of in successive detachments. 
He thereupon ordered Pearson to retire from 
Lundy's Lane to Queenston, sent back orders 
that Colonel Hercules Scott, who was march- 
ing up twelve hundred men from near St 
Catharine's on Twelve Mile Creek, was also 
to go to Queenston, and reported both these 
changes to Drummond, who was hurrying 
along the Queenston road towards Lundy's 
Lane as fast as he could. While the orderly 
officers were galloping back to Drummond and 
Hercules Scott, and while Pearson was getting 
his men into their order of march, Winfield 
Scott's brigade of American regulars suddenly 
appeared on the Chippawa road, deployed for 
attack, and halted. There was a pause on 
both sides. Winfield Scott thought he might 
have Drummond's whole force in front of him. 



144 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Riall thought he was faced by the whole of 
Brown's. But Winfield Scott, presently real- 
izing that Pearson was unsupported, resumed 
his advance ; while Pearson and Riall, not 
realizing that Winfield Scott was himself 
unsupported for the time being, immediately 
began to retire. 

At this precise moment Drummond dashed 
up and drew rein. There was not a minute to 
lose. The leading Americans were coming on 
in excellent order, only a musket-shot away ; 
Pearson's thousand were just in the act of 
giving up the key to the whole position ; and 
Drummond's eight hundred were plodding 
along a mile or so in rear. But within that 
fleeting minute Drummond made the plan 
that brought on the most desperately con- 
tested battle of the war. He ordered Pearson's 
thousand back again. He brought his own 
eight hundred forward at full speed. He sent 
post-haste to Colonel Scott to change once 
more and march on Lundy's Lane. And so, 
by the time the astonished Americans were 
about to seize the key themselves, they found 
him ready to defend it. 

Too long for a hillock, too low for a hill, this 
key to the whole position in that stern fight 
has never had a special name. But it may 



1814: LUNDY'S LANE 145 

;7ell be known as Battle Rise. It stood a mile 
Tom the Niagara river, and just a step inland 
Deyond the crossing of two roads. One of 
;hese, Lundy's Lane, ran lengthwise over it, 
it right angles to the Niagara. The other, 
vhich did not quite touch it, ran in the same 
iirection as the river, all the way from Fort 
Erie to Fort George, and, of course, through 
Doth Chippawa and Queenston. The crest of 
Battle Rise was a few yards on the Chippawa 
;ide of Lundy's Lane ; and there Drummond 
placed his seven field-guns. Round these guns 
:he thickest of the battle raged, from first to 
ast. The odds were four thousand Americans 
igainst three thousand British, altogether. 
But the British were in superior force at first ; 
md neither side had its full total in action at 
my one time, as casualties and reinforcements 
iept the numbers fluctuating. 

It was past six in the evening of that stifling 
25th of July when Winfield Scott attacked 
vith the utmost steadiness and gallantry, 
rhough the British outnumbered his splendid 
brigade, and though they had the choice of 
yround as well, he still succeeded in driving 
1 wedge through their left flank, a move which 
:hreatened to break them away from the road 
ilong the river. But they retired in good 

w.u.s. K 



146 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

order, re-formed, and then drove out his 
wedge. 

By half-past seven the American army had 
all come into action, and Drummond was 
having hard work to hold his own. Brown, 
like Winfield Scott, at once saw the supreme 
importance of taking Battle Rise ; so he sent 
two complete battalions against it, one of 
regulars leading, the other, of militia, in sup- 
port. At the first salvo from Drummond's 
seven guns the American militia broke and 
ran away. But Colonel Miller worked some 
of the American regulars very cleverly along 
the far side of a creeper-covered fence, while 
the rest engaged the battery from a distance. 
In the heat of action the British artillerymen 
never saw their real danger till, on a given 
signal. Miller's advanced party all sprang up 
and fired a point-blank volley which killed or 
wounded every man beside the guns. Then 
Miller charged and took the battery. But he 
only held it for a moment. The British centre 
charged up their own side of Battle Rise and 
drove the intruders back, after a terrific 
struggle with the bayonet. But again success 
was only for the moment. The Americans 
rallied and pressed the British back. The 
British then rallied and returned. And so 



1814: LUNDY^S LANE 147 

ihe desperate fight swayed back and forth 
across the coveted position ; till finally both 
sides retired exhausted, and the guns stood 
dumb between them. 

It was now pitch-dark, and the lull that 
Followed seemed almost like the end of the 
[ight. But, after a considerable pause, the 
Americans — all regulars this time — came on 
once more. This put the British in the 
greatest danger. Drummond had lost nearly 
a third of his men. The effective American 
regulars were little less than double his pre- 
sent twelve hundred effectives of all kinds and 
were the fresher army of the two. Miller 
had taken one of the guns from Battle Rise. 
The other six could not be served against 
close - quarter musketry ; and the nearest 
Americans were actually resting between the 
cross-roads and the deserted Rise. Defeat 
looked certain for the British. But, just as 
the attackers and defenders began to stir 
again. Colonel Hercules Scott's twelve hundred 
weary reinforcements came plodding along 
the Queenston road, wheeled round the 
corner into Lundy's Lane, and stumbled in 
among these nearest Americans, who, being 
the more expectant of the two, drove them 
back in confusion. The officers, however, 



148 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

rallied the men at once. Drummond told 
off eight hundred of them, including three 
hundred militia, to the reserve ; prolonged his 
line to the right with the rest ; and thus re- 
established the defence. 

Hardly had the new arrivals taken breath 
before the final assault began. Again the 
Americans took the silent battery. Again 
the British drove them back. Again the 
opposing lines swayed to and fro across the 
deadly crest of Battle Rise, with nothing else 
to guide them through the hot, black night 
but their own flaming musketry. The Ameri- 
cans could not have been more gallant and 
persistent in attack : the British could not 
have been more steadfast in defence. Mid- 
night came ; but neither side could keep its 
hold on Battle Rise. By this time Drummond 
was wounded ; and Riall was both wounded 
and a prisoner. Among the Americans Brown 
and Winfield Scott were also wounded, while 
their men were worn out after being under 
arms for nearly eighteen hours. A pause of 
sheer exhaustion followed. Then, slowly and 
sullenly, as if they knew the one more charge 
they could not make must carry home, the 
foiled Americans turned back and felt their 
way to Chippawa. 



1814: LUNDY^S LANE 149 

The British ranks lay down in the same 
order as that in which they fought ; and a 
deep hush fell over the whole, black-shrouded 
battlefield. The immemorial voice of those 
dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed 
for six long hours of mortal strife was heard 
once more. But near at hand there was no 
other sound than that which came from the 
whispered queries of a few tired officers on 
duty ; from the busy orderlies and surgeons 
at their work of mercy ; and from the wounded 
moaning in their pain. So passed the quiet 
half of that short, momentous, summer night. 
Within four hours the sun shone down on the 
living and the dead — on that silent battery 
whose gunners had fallen to a man — on the 
unconquered Rise. 

The tide of war along the Niagara frontier 
favoured neither side for some time after 
Lundy's Lane, though the Americans twice 
appeared to be regaining the initiative. On 
August 15 there was a well-earned American 
victory at Fort Erie, where Drummond's 
assault was beaten off with great loss to the 
British. A month later an American sortie 
was repulsed. On September 21 Drummond 
retired beaten ; and on October 13 he found 



150 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

himself again on the defensive at Chippawa, 
with little more than three thousand men, 
while Izard, who had come with American 
reinforcements from Lake Champlain and 
Sackett^s Harbour, was facing him with twice 
as many. But Yeo's fleet had now come up 
to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey's 
had remained at Sackett's Harbour. Thus 
the British had the priceless advantage of a 
movable naval base at hand, while the Ameri- | 
cans had none at all within supporting dis- 
tance. Every step towards Lake Ontario 
hampered Izard more and more, while it 
added corresponding strength to Drummond. 
An American attempt to work round Drum- 
mond 's flank, twelve miles inland, was also 
foiled by a heavy skirmish on October 19 at 
Cook's Mills ; and Izard's definite abandon- 
ment of the invasion was announced on j 
November 5 by his blowing up Fort Erie I 
and retiring into winter quarters. This ended 
the war along the whole Niagara. 

The campaign on Lake Ontario was very 
different. It opened two months earlier. 
The naval competition consisted rather in 
building than in fighting. The British built 
ships in Kingston, the Americans in Sackett's 
Harbour ; and reports of progress soon 



1814: LAKE ONTARIO 151 

travelled across the intervening space of less 
than forty miles. The initiative of combined 
operations by land and water was under- 
taken by the British instead of by the Ameri- 
cans. Yeo and Drummond wished to attack 
Sackett's Harbour with four thousand men. 
But Prevost said he could spare them only 
three thousand ; whereupon they changed 
their objective to Oswego, which they took, 
in excellent style, on May 6. The British 
suffered a serious reverse, though on a very 
much smaller scale, on May 30, at Sandy 
Creek, between Oswego and Sackett's Harbour, 
when a party of marines and bluejackets, sent 
to cut out some vessels with naval stores for 
Chauncey, was completely lost, every man 
being either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. 
From Lake Ontario down to the sea the 
Canadian frontier was never seriously threat- 
ened ; and the only action of any consequence 
was fought to the south of Montreal in the 
early spring. On March 30 the Americans 
made a last inglorious attempt in this direction. 
Wilkinson started with four thousand men to 
follow the line of Lake Champlain and the 
Richelieu river, the same that was tried by 
Dearborn in 18 12 and by Hampton in 18 13. 
At La Colle, only four miles across the frontier, 



152 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

he attacked Major Handcock's post of two 
hundred men. The result was like a second 
Chateauguay. Handcock drew in three hun- 
dred reinforcements and two gunboats from 
Isle-aux-Noix. Wilkinson's advanced guard 
lost its way overnight. In the morning he 
lacked the resolution to press on, even with 
his overwhelming numbers ; and so, after a 
part of his army had executed some disjointed 
manoeuvres, he withdrew the whole and gave 
up in despair. 

From this point of the Canadian frontier 
to the very end of the five-thousand-mile loop, 
that is, from Montreal to Mexico, the theatre 
of operations was directly based upon the sea, 
where the British Navy was by this time un- 
disputedly supreme. A very few small Ameri- 
can men-of-war were still at large, together 
with a much greater number of privateers. 
But they had no power whatever even to miti- 
gate the irresistible blockade of the whole 
coast-line of the United States. American sea- 
borne commerce simply died away ; for no 
mercantile marine could have any independent 
life when its trade had to be carried on by a 
constantly decreasing tonnage, when, too, it 
could go to sea at all only by furtive evasion. 



i8i4 : THE GREAT BLOCKADE 153 

and when it had to take cargo at risks so great 
that they could not be covered either by in- 
surance or by any attainable profits. The 
Atlantic being barred by this Great Blockade, 
and the Pacific being inaccessible, the only 
practical way left open to American trade was 
through the British lines by land or sea. Some 
American seamen shipped in British vessels. 
Some American ships sailed under British 
colours. But the chief external American 
trade was done illicitly, by * underground,' 
with the British West Indies and with Canada 
itself. This was, of course, in direct defiance 
of the American government, and to the direct 
detriment of the United States as a nation. 
It was equally to the direct benefit of the 
British colonies in general and of Nova Scotia 
in particular. American harbours had never 
been so dull. Quebec and Halifax had never 
been so prosperous. American money was 
drained away from the warlike South and West 
and either concentrated in the Northern States 
— ^which were opposed to the war — or paid 
over into British hands. 

Nor was this all. The British Navy harried 
the coast in every convenient quarter and 
m.ade effective the work of two most impor- 
tant joint attacks, one on Maine, the other 



154 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

on Washington itself. The attack on Maine 
covered two months, altogether, from July ii 
to September ii. It began with the taking of 
Moose Island by Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson's 
old flag-captain at Trafalgar, and ended with 
the surrender, at Machias, of * about loo miles 
of sea-coast,' together with * that intermediate 
tract of country which separates the province 
of New Brunswick from Lower Canada/ On 
September 21 Sir John Sherbrooke proclaimed 
at Halifax the formal annexation of * all the 
eastern side of the Penobscot river and all 
the country lying between the same river and 
the boundary of New Brunswick.* 

The attack on Maine was meant, in one 
sense at least, to create a partial counterpoise 
to the American preponderance on Lake Erie. 
The attack on Washington was made in retalia- 
tion for the burning of the old and new capitals 
of Upper Canada, Newark and York. 

The naval defence of Washington had been 
committed to Commodore Barney, a most 
expert and gallant veteran of the Revolution, 
who handled his wholly inadequate little 
force with consummate skill and daring, both 
afloat and ashore. He was not, strictly 
speaking, a naval officer, but a privateersman 
who had made the unique record of taking 



i8i4 : THE GREAT BLOCKADE 155 

eleven prizes in ten consecutive days with his 
famous Baltimore schooner Rossie, The mili- 
tary defence was committed to General Winder, 
one of the two generals captured by Harvey's 
* 704 firelocks ' at Stoney Creek the year be- 
fore. Winder was a good soldier and did his 
best in the seven weeks at his disposal. But 
the American government, which had now 
enjoyed continuous party power for no less 
than thirteen years, gave him no more than 
four hundred regulars, backed by Barney's four 
hundred excellent seamen and the usual array 
of militia, with whom to defend the capital 
in the third campaign of a war they had them- 
selves declared. There were 93,500 militiamen 
within the threatened area. But only fifteen 
thousand were got under arms ; and only five 
thousand were brought into action. 

In the middle of August the British fleet 
under Admirals Cochrane and Cockburn sailed 
into Chesapeake Bay with a detachment of 
four thousand troops commanded by General 
Ross. Barney had no choice but to retire 
before this overwhelming force. As the British 
advanced up the narrowing waters all chance 
of escape disappeared ; so Barney burnt his 
boats and little vessels and marched his sea- 
men in to join Winder's army. On August 24 



156 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

Winder^s whole six thousand drew up in an 
exceedingly strong position at Bladensburg, 
just north of Washington ; and the President 
rode out with his Cabinet to see a battle which 
is best described by its derisive title of the 
Bladensburg Races. Ross's four thousand 
came on and were received by an accurate 
checking fire from the regular artillery and 
from Barney's seamen gunners. But a total 
loss of 8 killed and ii wounded was more 
than the 5000 American militia could stand. 
All the rest ran for dear life. The deserted 
handful of regular soldiers and sailors was 
then overpowered ; while Barney was severely 
wounded and taken prisoner. He and they, 
however, had saved their honour and won the 
respect and admiration of both friend and foe. 
Ross and Cockburn at once congratulated him 
on the stand he had made against them ; and 
he, with equal magnanimity, reported officially 
that the British had treated him * just like a 
brother.' 

That night the little British army of four 
thousand men burnt governmental Washing- 
ton, the capital of a country with eight 
millions of people. Not a man, not a woman, 
not a child, was in any way molested ; nor 
was one finger laid on any private property. 



1814: PLATTSBURG 157 

The four thousand then marched back to the 
fleet, through an area inhabited by 93,500 
miHtiamen on paper, without having so much 
as a single musket fired at them. 

Now, if ever, was Prevost^s golden oppor- 
tunity to end the war with a victory that 
would turn the scale decisively in favour of 
the British cause. With the one exception 
of Lake Erie, the British had the upper hand 
over the whole five thousand miles of front. 
A successful British counter-invasion, across 
the Montreal frontier, would offset the Ameri- 
can hold on Lake Erie, ensure the control of 
Lake Champlain, and thus bring all the scat- 
tered parts of the campaign into their proper 
relation to a central, crowning triumph. 

On the other hand, defeat would mean dis- 
aster. But the bare possibility of defeat 
seemed quite absurd when Prevost set out 
from his field headquarters opposite Montreal, 
between La Prairie and Chambly, with eleven 
thousand seasoned veterans, mostly ' Peninsu- 
lars,* to attack Plattsburg, which was no more 
than twenty-five miles across the frontier, 
very weakly fortified, and garrisoned only by 
the fifteen hundred regulars whom Izard had 
* culled out ' when he started for Niagara. 



158 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

The naval odds were not so favourable. 
But, as they could be decisively affected by 
military action, they naturally depended on 
Prevost, who, with his overwhelming army, 
could turn them whichever way he chose. 
It was true that Commodore Macdonough's 
American flotilla had more trained seamen 
than Captain Downie's corresponding British 
force, and that his crews and vessels pos- 
sessed the further advantage of having worked 
together for some time. Downie, a brave 
and skilful young officer, had arrived to take 
command of his flotilla at the upper end of 
Lake Champlain only on September 2, that 
is, exactly a week before Prevost urged him 
to attack, and nine days before the battle 
actually did take place. He had a fair pro- 
portion of trained seamen ; but they con- 
sisted of scratch drafts from different men-of- 
war, chosen in haste and hurried to the front. 
Most of the men and officers were complete 
strangers to one another ; and they made such 
short-handed crews that some soldiers had to 
be wheeled out of the line of march and put 
on board at the very last minute. There 
would have been grave difflculties with such 
a flotilla under any circumstances. But Pre- 
vost had increased them tenfold by giving 



1814: PLATTSBURG 159 

no orders and making no preparations while 
trying his hand at another abortive armistice 
— one, moreover, which he had no authority- 
even to propose. 

Yet, in spite of all this, Prevost still had 
the means of making Downie superior to 
Macdonough. Macdonough's vessels were 
mostly armed with carronades, Downie's with 
long guns. Carronades fired masses of small 
projectiles with great effect at very short 
ranges. Long guns, on the other hand, fired 
each a single large projectile up to the farthest 
ranges known. In fact, it was almost as if 
the Americans had been armed with shot- 
guns and the British armed with rifles. There- 
fore the Americans had an overwhelming ad- 
vantage at close quarters, while the British 
had a corresponding advantage at long range. 
Now, Macdonough had anchored in an ideal 
position for close action inside Plattsburg Bay. 
He required only a few men to look after his 
ground tackle ; ^ and his springs ^ were out 
on the landward side for * winding ship,^ that 
is, for turning his vessels completely round, 

* Anchors and cables. 

2 Ropes to hold a vessel in position when hauling or swinging 
in a harbour. Here, ropes from the stern to the anchors on the 
landward side. 



i6o THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

so as to bring their fresh broadsides into 
action. There was no sea-room for manoeu- 
vring round him with any chance of success ; 
so the British would be at a great disadvan- 
tage while standing in to the attack, first 
because they could be raked end-on, next 
because they could only reply with bow fire 
— the weakest of all — and, lastly, because 
their best men would be engaged with the 
sails and anchors while their ships were 
taking station. 

Biit Prevost had it fully in his power to 
prevent Macdonough from fighting in such an 
ideal position at all. Macdonough 's American 
flotilla was well within range of Macomb's 
long-range American land batteries; while 
Prevost's overwhelming British army was 
easily able to take these land batteries, 
turn their guns on Macdonough's helpless 
vessels — whose short-range carronades could 
not possibly reply — and so either destroy the 
American flotilla at anchor in the bay or 
force it out into the open lake, where it would 
meet Downie's long-range guns at the greatest 
disadvantage. Prevost, after allowing for all 
other duties, had at least seven thousand 
veterans for an assault on Macomb's second- 
rate regulars and ordinary militia, both of 



1814: PLATTSBURG 161 

whom together amounted at most to thirty- 
live hundred, including local militiamen who 
had come in to reinforce the * culls ' whom 
Izard had left behind. The Americans, though 
working with very creditable zeal, determined 
to do their best, quite expected to be beaten 
out of their little forts and entrenchments, 
which were just across the fordable Saranac in 
front of Prevost's army. They had tried to 
delay the British advance. But, in the words 
of Macomb's own official report, * so undaunted 
was the enemy that he never deployed in his 
whole march, always pressing on in column ' ; 
that is, the British veterans simply brushed 
the Americans aside without deigning to 
change from their column of march into a line 
of battle. Prevost's duty was therefore per- 
fectly plain. With all the odds in his favour 
ashore, and with the power of changing the 
odds in his favour afloat, he ought to have 
captured Macomb's position in the early morn- 
ing and turned both his own and Macomb's 
artillery on Macdonough, who would then 
have b^n forced to leave his moorings for 
the open lake, where Downie would have 
had eight hours of daylight to fight him at 
long range. 

What Prevost actually did was something 

vv.u.s. L 



i62 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

disgracefully different. Having first wasted 
time by his attempted armistice, and so 
hindered preparations at the base, between 
La Prairie and Chambly, he next proceeded 
to cross the frontier too soon. He reported 
home that Downie could not be ready before 
September 15. But on August 31 he crossed 
the line himself, only twenty-five miles from 
his objective, thus prematurely showing the 
enemy his hand. Then he began to goad 
the unhappy Downie to his doom. Downie's 
flagship, the Confiance, named after a French 
prize which Yeo had taken, was launched 
only on August 25, and hauled out into the 
stream only on September 7. Her scratch 
crew could not go to battle quarters till the 
8th ; and the shipwrights were working madly 
at her up to the very moment that the first 
shot was fired in her fatal action on the nth. 
Yet Prevost tried to force her into action on 
the 9th, adding, ' I need not dwell with you 
on the evils resulting to both services from 
delay, ^ and warning Downie that he was being 
watched : * Captain Watson is directed to 
remain at Little Chazy until you are prepar- 
ing to get under way.' 

Thus watched and goaded by the governor- 
general and commander-in-chief, whose own 



1814: PLATTSBURG 163 

service was the Army, Downie, a compara- 
tive junior in the Navy, put forth his utmost 
efforts, against his better judgment, to sail 
that very midnight. A baffling head-wind, 
hov/ever, kept him from working out. He 
immediately reported to Prevost, giving quite 
satisfactory reasons. But Prevost wrote back 
impatiently : ' The troops have been held in 
readiness, since six o'clock this morning [the 
loth], to storm the enemy's works at nearly 
the same time as the naval action begins in 
the bay. I ascribe the disappointment I 
have experienced to the unfortunate change 
of wind, and shall rejoice to learn that my 
reasonable expectations have been frustrated 
by no other cause. ^ * No other cause,^ The 
innuendo, even if unintentional, was there. 
Downie, a junior sailor, was perhaps suspected 
of * shyness ' by a very senior soldier. Pre- 
vost's poison worked quickly. * I will con- 
vince him that the Navy won't be backward,' 
said Downie to his second, Pring, who gave 
this evidence, under oath, at the subsequent 
court-martial. Pring, whose evidence was 
corroborated by that of both the first lieu- 
tenant and the master of the Confiancey then 
urged the extreme risk of engaging Mac- 
donough inside the bay. But Downie allayed 



i64 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

their anxiety by telling them that Prevost 
had promised to storm Macomb's indefensible 
works simultaneously. This was not nearly 
so good as if Prevost had promised to defeat 
Macomb first and then drive Macdonough out 
to sea. But it was better, far better, than 
what actually was done. 

With Prevost 's written promise in his 
pocket Downie sailed for Plattsburg in the 
early morning of that fatal nth of September. 
Punctually to the minute he fired his precon- 
certed signal outside Cumberland Head, which 
separated the bay from the lake. He next 
waited exactly the prescribed time, during 
which he reconnoitred Macdonough's position 
from a boat. Then the hour of battle came. 
The hammering of the shipwrights stopped 
at last ; and the ill-starred Confiance, that 
ship which never had a chance to ^ find her- 
self,* led the little squadron into Prevost 's 
death-trap in the bay. Every soldier and 
sailor now realized that the storming of the 
works on land ought to have been the first 
move, and that Prevost 's idea of simultaneous 
action was faulty, because it meant two inde- 
pendent fights, with the chance of a naval 
disaster preceding the military success. How- 
ever, Prevost was the commander-in-chief ; 



1814: PLATTSBURG 165 

he had promised co-operation in his own way ; 
and Downie was determined to show him 
that the Navy had stopped for ' no other 
cause * than the head-wind of the day before. 

Did no other cause than mistaken judgment 
affect Prevost that fatal morning ? Did he 
intend to show Downie that a commander- 
in-chief could not suffer the * disappoint- 
ment * of * holding troops in readiness ^ with- 
out marking his displeasure by some visible 
return in kind ? Or was he no worse than 
criminally weak ? His motives will never be 
known. But his actions throw a sinister 
light upon them. For when Downie sailed 
in to the attack Prevost did nothing what- 
ever to help him. Betrayed, traduced, and 
goaded to his ruin, Downie fought a losing 
battle with the utmost gallantry and skill. 
The wind flawed and failed inside the bay, so 
that the Confiance could not reach her proper 
station. Yet her first broadside struck down 
forty men aboard the Saratoga. Then the 
Saratoga fired her carronades, at point-blank 
range, cut up the cables aboard the Confiance, 
and did great execution among the crew. In 
fifteen minutes Downie fell. 

The battle raged two full hours longer ; 
while the odds against the British continued 



i66 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

to increase. Four of their little gunboats 
fought as well as gunboats could. But the 
other seven simply ran away, like their com- 
mander afterwards when summoned for a 
court-martial that would assuredly have sen- 
tenced him to death. Two of the larger vessels 
failed to come into action properly ; one went 
ashore, the other drifted through the American 
line and then hauled down her colours. Thus 
the battle was fought to its dire conclusion by 
the British Confiance and Linnet against the 
American Saratoga^ Eagle, and Ticonderoga, 
The gunboats had little to do with the result ; 
though the odds of all those actually engaged 
were greatly in favour of Macdonough. The 
fourth American vessel of larger size drifted 
out of action. 

Macdonough, an officer of whom any navy 
in the world might well be proud, then con- 
centrated on the stricken Confiance with his 
own Saratoga, greatly aided by the Eagle, 
which swung round so as to rake the Con- 
fiance with her fresh broadside. The Linnet 
now drifted off a little and so could not help 
the Confiance, both because the American 
galleys at once engaged her and because 
her position was bad in any case. Presently 
both flagships slackened fire ; whereupon Mac- 



1814: PLATTSBURG 167 

donough took the opportunity of winding 
ship. His ground tackle was in perfect order 
on the far, or landward, side ; so the Saratoga 
swung round quite easily. The Confiance now 
had both the Eagle's and the Saratoga's fresh 
carronade broadsides deluging her battered, 
cannon - armed broadside with showers of 
deadly grape. Her one last chance of keep- 
ing up a little longer v\^as to wind ship herself. 
Her tackle had all been cut ; but her master 
got out his last spare cables and tried to bring 
her round, while some of his toiling men fell 
dead at every haul. She began to wind round 
very slowly ; and, when exactly at right 
angles to Macdonough, was raked completely, 
fore and aft. At the same time an ominous 
list to port, where her side was torn in over a 
hundred places, showed that she would sink 
quickly if her guns could not be run across to 
starboard. But more than half her mixed 
scratch crew had been already killed or 
wounded. The most desperate efforts of her 
few surviving officers could not prevent the 
confusion that followed the fearful raking she 
now received from both her superior oppo- 
nents ; and before her fresh broadside could 
be brought to bear she was forced to strike 
her flag. Then every American carronade 



i68 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

and gun was turned upon Pring's undaunted 
little Linnety which kept up the hopeless fight 
for fifteen minutes longer ; so that Prevost 
might yet have a chance to carry out his own 
operations without fear of molestation from 
a hostile bay. 

But Prevost was in no danger of molesta- 
tion. He was in perfect safety. He watched 
the destruction of his fleet from his secure 
headquarters, well inland, marched and coun- 
termarched his men about, to make a show 
of action ; and then, as the Linnet fired her 
last, despairing gun, he told all ranks to go 
to dinner. 

That night he broke camp hurriedly, left 
all his badly wounded men behind him, and 
went back a great deal faster than he came. 
His shamed, disgusted veterans deserted in 
unprecedented numbers. And Macomb's as- 
tounded army found themselves the victors 
of an unfought field. 

The American victory at Plattsburg gave 
the United States the absolute control of 
Lake Champlain ; and this, reinforcing their 
similar control of Lake Erie, counterbalanced 
the British military advantages all along the 
Canadian frontier. The British command of 
the sea, the destruction of Washington, and 



i8i4 : PEACE 169 

the occupation of Maine told heavily on the 
other side. These three British advantages 
had been won while the mother country was 
fighting with her right hand tied behind her 
back ; and in all the elements of warlike 
strength the British Empire was vastly sup- 
erior to the United States. Thus there cannot 
be the slightest doubt that if the British had 
been free to continue the war they must have 
triumphed. But they were not free. Europe 
was seething with the profound unrest that 
made her statesmen feel the volcano heaving 
under their every step during the portentous 
year between Napoleon's abdication and re- 
turn. The mighty British Navy, the veteran 
British Army, could not now be sent across 
the sea in overwhelming force. So American 
diplomacy eagerly seized this chance of pro- 
fiting by British needs, and took such good 
advantage of them that the Treaty of Ghent, 
which ended the war on Christmas Eve, left 
the two opponents in much the same position 
towards each other as before. Neither of the 
main reasons for which the Americans had 
fought their three campaigns was even men- 
tioned in the articles. 

The war had been an unmitigated curse to 



170 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

the motherland herself ; and it brought the 
usual curses in its train all over the scene of 
action. But some positive good came out of 
it as well, both in Canada and in the United 
States. 

The benefits conferred on the United States 
could not be given in apter words than those 
used by Gallatin, who, as the finance minis- 
ter during four presidential terms, saw quite 
enough of the seamy side to sober his opinions, 
and who, as a prominent member of the war 
party, shared the disappointed hopes of his 
colleagues about the conquest of Canada. His 
opinion is, of course, that of a partisan. But 
it contains much truth, for all that 

The war has been productive of evil and 
of good ; but I think the good prepon- 
derates. It has laid the foundations of 
permanent taxes and military establish- 
ments, which the Republicans [as the anti- 
Federalist Democrats were then called] 
had deemed unfavorable to the happiness 
and free institutions of the country. Under 
our former system we v/ere becoming too 
selfish, too much attached exclusively to 
the acquisition of wealth, above all, too 
much confined in our political feelings to 



i8i4 : EFFECTS OF THE WAR 171 

local and state objects. The war has re- 
newed the national feelings and character 
which the Revolution had given, and which 
were daily lessening. The people are now 
more American. They feel and act more 
as a nation. And I hope that the per- 
manency of the Union is thereby better 
secured. 

Gallatin did not, of course, foresee that it 
would take a third conflict to finish what the 
Revolution had begun. But this sequel only 
strengthens his argument. For that Union 
which was born in the throes of the Revolu- 
tion had to pass through its tumultuous youth 
in ^1812^ before reaching full manhood by 
means of the Civil War. 

The benefits conferred on Canada were 
equally permanent and even greater. How 
Gallatin would have rejoiced to see in the 
United States any approach to such a finan- 
cial triumph as that which was won by the 
Army Bills in Canada ! No public measure 
was ever more successful at the time or more 
full of promise for the future. But mightier 
problems than even those of national finance 
were brought nearer to their desirable solu- 
tion by this propitious war. It made Ontario 



172 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

what Quebec had long since been — historic 
ground ; thus bringing the older and newer 
provinces together with one exalting touch. 
It was also the last, as well as the most 
convincing, defeat of the three American 
invasions of Canada. The first had been 
led by Sir William Phips in 1690. This was 
long before the Revolution. The American 
Colonies were then still British and Canada 
still French. But the invasion itself was dis- 
tinctively American, in men, ships, money, 
and design. It was undertaken without the 
consent or knowledge of the home authori- 
ties ; and its success would probably have 
destroyed all chance of there being any 
British Canada to-day. The second Ameri- 
can invasion had been that of Montgomery 
and Arnold in 1775, during the Revolution, 
when the very diverse elements of a new 
Canadian life first began to defend their 
common heritage against a common foe. The 
third invasion — the War of 18 12 — united all 
these elements once more, just when Canada 
stood most in need of mutual confidence 
between them. So there could not have been 
a better bond of union than the blood then 
shed so willingly by her different races in a 
single righteous cause. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Enough books to fill a small library have been 
written about the * sprawling and sporadic * War 
of 1812. Most of them deal with particular phases, 
localities, or events; and most of them are dis- 
tinctly partisan. This is unfortunate, but not sur- 
prising. The war was waged over an immense 
area, by various forces, and with remarkably 
various results. The Americans were victorious 
on the Lakes and in all but one of the naval 
duels fought at sea. Yet their coast was com- 
pletely sealed up by the Great Blockade in the 
last campaign. The balance of victory inclined 
towards the British side on land. Yet the anni- 
hilating American victories on the Lakes nullified 
most of the general military advantages gained 
by the British along the Canadian frontier. The 
fortunes of each campaign were followed with 
great interest on both sides of the line. But on 
the other side of the Atlantic the British home 
public had Napoleon to think of at their very 
doors; and so, for the most part, they regarded 
the war with the States as an untoward and 
regrettable annoyance, which diverted too much 

173 



174 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

force and attention from the life-and-death affairs 
of Europe. 

All these peculiar influences are reflected in the 
different patriotic annals. Americans are voluble 
about the Lakes and the naval duels out at sea. 
But the completely effective British blockade of 
their coast-line is a too depressingly scientific 
factor in the problem to be welcomed by a 
general public vrhich would not understand how 
Yankee ships could win so many duels while the 
British Navy won the war. Canadians are equally 
voluble about the battles on Canadian soil, where 
Americans had decidedly the worst of it. As a 
rule, Canadian writers have been quite as contro- 
versial as Americans, and not any readier to study 
their special subjects as parts of a greater whole. 
The British Isles have never had an interested 
public anxious to read about this remote, dis- 
tasteful, and subsidiary war ; and books about it 
there have consequently been very few. 

The two chief authors who have appealed 
directly to the readers of the mother country are 
William James and Sir Charles Lucas. James 
was an industrious naval historian; but he was 
quite as anti-American as the earlier American 
writers were anti-British. Owing to this pervert- 
ing bias his two books, the Naval and the Military 
Occurrences of ttie late War between Great Britain 
and the United States, are not to be relied upon. 
Their appendices, however, give a great many 
documents which are of much assistance in study- 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 175 

ing the real history of the war. James wrote only 
a few years after the peace. Nearly a century 
later Sir Charles Lucas wrote The Canadian War 
of 1812, which is the work of a man whose life- 
long service in the Colonial Office and intimate 
acquaintance with Canadian history have both 
been turned to the best account. The two chief 
Canadian authors are Colonel Cruikshank and 
James Hannay. Colonel Cruikshank deserves the 
greatest credit for being a real pioneer with his 
Documentary History of the Campaigns upon the 
Niagara Frontier. Hannay's History of the War 
of 1812 shows careful study of the Canadian 
aspects of the operations ; but its generally sound 
arguments are weakened by its controversial 
tone. 

The four chief American authors to reckon 
with are, Lossing, Upton, Roosevelt, and Mahan. 
They complement rather than correspond with the 
four British authors. The best known American 
work dealing with the military campaigns is 
Lossing's J^ield-Book of the War of 1812. It is 
an industrious compilation ; but quite uncritical 
and most misleading. General Upton's Military 
Policy of the United States incidentally pricks 
all the absurd American militia bubbles with an 
incontrovertible array of hard and pointed facts. 
The Naval War of 1812^ by Theodore Roosevelt, is 
an excellent sketch which shows a genuine wish 
to be fair to both sides. But the best naval work, 
and the most thorough work of any kind on either 



176 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 

side, is Admiral Mahan's Sea Power in its Relations 
to the War of 1812. 

A good deal of original evidence on the American 
side is given in Brannan's Official Letters of the 
Military and Naval Officers of the United States 
during the War with Great Britain in the Years 
1812 to 1815, The original British evidence 
about the campaigns in Canada is given in 
William Wood's Select British Documents of the 
Canadian War of 1812, Students who wish to see 
the actual documents must go to Washington, 
London, and Ottawa. The Dominion Archives 
are of exceptional interest to all concerned. 

The present work is based entirely on original 
evidence, both American and British, 



INDEX 



Amherstburg, 57; abandoned 
by the British, 120, 122. 

Armstrong-, John, war secre- 
tary to United States, 41-2, 

lOI. 

Army Bill Act, the, 39-40, 75. 

Barclay, Captain, his defeat on 
Lake Erie, 120-2. 

Barney, Commodore, his gal- 
lant stand at Bladensburg-, 

154-6. ^ 

Baynes, Colonel, his failure at 
Sackett's Harbour, iio-ii. 

Beaver Dams, battle of, 1 13-16. 

Berkeley, Admiral, exagger- 
ates the 'Right of Search,' 
10-12. 

Bisshopp, Colonel, 97, 98 ; at 
Beaver Dams, 116 ; killed, 
118. 

Bladensburg Races, 156. 

Boerstier, Colonel, defeated at 
Beaver Dams, 114, 1 15-16. 

Boyd, General, defeated at 
Chrystler's Farm, 129-30. 

Brant, John, with the Indians 
at Beaver Dams, 113. 

Brock, Sir Isaac, commander 
of the forces in Upper Can- 
ada, 51-4, 57, 58, 63-4; his 
meeting with Tecumseh at 
Amherstburg, 64-7 ; his cap- 
ture of Detroit, 67-73 ; at the 
Niagara frontier, 73-4, 76-7, 

w.u.s. M 



80-1 ; his death at Queenston 
Heights, 84-8, 94-5. 
Broke, Captain, his victory on 

the 'Shannon,' 117. 
Brown, General, 128-30 ; de- 
feats Riall at Chippawa, 138- 
139 ; wounded at Lundy's 

' Lane, 141-8. 

I Brownstown, Americans am- 

j buscaded at, 61. 

I Burlington, British raid on, 119. 

Canada, the character of her 
population in 1812, 14, 31-2, 
52-3 ; a disloyal minority, 32, 
53-4 ; American illusions con- 
cerning, 18-19, 57; previous 
invasions, 17-18, 172; her 
I naval and transport services, 
! 34-6; her army, 37-g, 63-4, 
I 104 ; her financial resources, 
I 39-40 ; her Indian policy, 66 : 
benefits derived from the war, 
171-2. See War of 1812. 
I Canning, George, and the 

'Chesapeake affair, 11-12. 
I Chateauguay, battle of, 123-8. 
I Chauncey, Commodore, com- 
i mands American navy on 
Lakes Erie and Ontario, 48, 
107, 109, III, 139-40, 150. 
Chicago. See Fort Dearborn. 
Chippawa, battle of, 138-9. 
Chrystler's Farm, battle at, 
129-30. 



178 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 



Clark, Colonel, at Beaver 
Dams, 1 1 6. 

Clay, Henry, his aggressive 
policy, i8. 

Cockburn, Admiral, in the at- 
tack on Washington, 155-7. 

Craig, Sir James, governor- 
general of Canada, 66, 75 ; 
and Brock, 71. 

Croghan, Major, defeated at 
Mackinaw, 136. 

Dearborn, General, his cam- 
paign against Montreal, 47- 
48, 49, 74, 99-100 ; captures 
York, 107 ; and Fort George, 
109, III. 

Dennis, Captain, wounded at 
Queenston Heights, 83, 84, 
91, 93; disputes American 
advance on the Montreal 
frontier, 129. 

Detroit, 46-7; its surrender to 
the British, 67-73, 77- 

Downie, Captain, his gallant 
sacrifice in Plattsburg Bay, 
158-65. 

Drummond, General Gordon, in 
command in Upper Canada, 
131, 132, 151 ; on the Nia- 
gara frontier, 137-8, 149-50 ; 
wounded at Lundy's Lane, 
141-8. 

Elliott, Lieut., his raid at Fort 
Erie, 78. 

Embargo Act, the, 13-14, 15, 29. 

Eustis, William, American war 
secretary, 41-2 ; his illusion 
regarding Canada, 18-19 > l^is 
incompetence, 41-2, 49, 56, 
Id. 

Evans, Major, with Brock at 
Fort George, 84, 85. 



Everard, Captain, his raid on 
Lake Champlain, 119. 

FitzGibbon, Lieut., his gener- 
osity at Beaver Dams, 1 13-16. 

Fort Dearborn, 49; evacuated 
by the Americans, 60. 

Fort Erie, 97 ; captured by the 
Americans, 138, 149, 150. 

Fort George, Brock at, 80-1, 
82, 84, 90 ; surrendered, 109, 
118 ; evacuated by the Ameri- 
cans, 131. 

Fort Meigs, 105, 106. 

Fort Niagara, 53, 76, 84, 90; 
the British feat of arms at, 

131-3. 

Fort Schlosser, 118, 133. 

Fort Stephenson, 107. 

France, her Berhn Decree, 1-2. 

Frenchman's Creek, the Ameri- 
cans defeated at, 97-8. 

Frenchtown, battle of, 105. 

Gallatin, Albert, on the effects 
of the War of 1812, 170-1. 

Ghent, treaty of, 169. 

Great Britain, her Orders -in- 
Council and Right of Search, 
1-3, 9-12, 74 ; her attitude to- 
wards United States, 7, 9, 
14, 16-17, 30> 74 ; her troubles 
previous to 1812, 30-1 ; her 
anxiety to avoid war with 
United States, 30, 44-5, 173 ; 
I her navy, 32-4, 44-5, 50, 152-3, 
I 155 ; her forces in Canada, 
34-40, 50. See War of 1812. 

Halifax, 50 ; and the Embargo 
! Act, 13, 153. 

I Hall, Captain, co-operates in 
the capture of Detroit, 70. 

Hampton, General, 119; de- 



INDEX 



179 



feated at Chateauguay, 123-8, 

130- 
Handcock, Major, at La Colle, 

151-2. 

Hanks, Lieutenant, surrenders 
Michilimackinac to the Brit- 
ish, 59, 68. 

Hardy, Sir Thomas, captures 
Moose Island, 154. 

Haren, Major de, at Beaver 
Dams, 113, 116. 

Harrison, General, 59 ; in com- 
mand of United States west- 
ern army, loi, 104, 105, 122. 

Harvey, Colonel, his victory 
at Stoney Creek, 112; at 
Chrystler's Farm, 129. 

Heald, Captain, his disastrous 
evacuation of Fort Dearborn, 
60. 

Henry, John, his treachery, 17. 

Holcroft, Captain, with Brock 
at Queenston Heights, 90, 

93- 
Hull, General William, in com- 
mand of U nited States north- 
western army, 48, 49, 55-6 ; 
his invasion of Canada, 54-5, 
56-8, 60 ; retires to Detroit, 
60-2, 67-8 ; and surrenders to 
Brock, 71-3, 100, loi. 

Indians, their attitude towards 
the British, ;^2f 39, 50-60, 64, 
66 ; in the War of 1812, 39, 
58, 60, 61, 69, 71-2, 92, 93, 
94, 105, 106, 1 13-16, 122, 125- 
126, 128, 133, 136, 139 ; objec- 
tion to their use, 55. 

Izard, General, his invasion of 
Canada, 150, 157. 

Jarvis, Lieut., with Brock at 
Queenston Heights, 85. 



Jay, John, his trade treaty with 
Britain, 5, 6-7. 

Jefferson, President, his anta- 
gonism towards Britain, 5, 7- 
8 ; his naval and military 
policy, 8-9, 23, 24, 26 ; up- 
holds * Sailors' Rights,' 8, 9- 
II ; and * Free Trade,' 12-14; 
his Embargo Act, 13-14, 15 ; 
his illusion regarding Can- 
ada, 19. 

Jones, Captain Paul, founder 
of the American Navy, 22. 

La Colle, 100, 151-2. 

Lake Champlain, a British 

raid on, 119; battle of, 158-68. 
Lake Erie, battle of, 119-22; 

Americans supreme on, 136- 

137- 
Lake Ontario, operations on, 

150-1. 
Lawrence, Captain, his defeat 

on the * Chesapeake,' 117. 
Lewiston, 78, 81, 84, 90 ; burned 

by the British, 133, 142. 
Lovett, John, on the American 

militia at Queenston Heights, 

91-2. 
Lundy's Lane, battle of, 141-9. 

M 'Arthur, Colonel, with Hull 

at Detroit, 62, 70. 
M'Clure, General, his wanton 

destruction of Newark, 131. 
Macdonell, Colonel, with Brock 

at Detroit, 67. 
Macdonell, Colonel George, his 

success at Ogdensburg, 105- 

106 ; at Ch&teauguay, 123-8. 
Macdonell, Colonel John, mort- 

sdly wounded at Queenston 

Heights, 89. 
Macdonough, Commodore, his 



i8o THE WAR WITH THE STATES 



victory on Lake Champlain, 
158-68. 

M'Douall, Colonel, his victory 
at Mackinaw, 135-6. 

M'Kay, Colonel, captures 
Prairie du Chien, 136. 

Mackinaw. See Michilimac- 
kinac. 

Macomb, General, his defence 
of Plattsburg-, 160-1, 168. 

Madison, President, his de- 
claration of war, 41, 15 ; his 
naval policy, 24, 42-3 ; at 
Bladensburg- Races, 156. 

Mag-uag-a, battle of, 61. 

Maine, the British attack on, 

I53-4- 
Maritime Provinces, and the 

War of 1812, 50. 
Michilimackinac, 46, 49 ; cap- 
tured by the British, 58-9, 

lOi, 135-6. 
Miller, Colonel, at Lundy's 

Lane, 146-7. 
Monroe, James, and the 

'Chesapeake' affair, 11-12. 
Montreal, 47, loi, 119. 
Montreal frontier, the, American 

invasions of, 123-30, 151-2 ; 

a British counter-invasion, 

157, 168. 
Moravian Town, battle of, 122. 
Morrison, Colonel, his victory 

at Chrystler's Farm, 129-30. 
Mulcaster, Captain, harasses 

Americans on the Montreal 

frontier, 129-30. 
Murray, Colonel, raids Lake 

Champlain, 119; his g-allant 

feat of arms at Fort Niagara, 

131-2. 

Napoleon I, his war with Great 
Britain, 1-2, 15, 30. 



Newark, 109 ; the shameful de- 
struction of, 131, 154. 
New Orleans, British disaster 

at, 135- 
Niagara frontier, the, 47 ; Brit- 
ish victories on, 131-3, 137- 
; 149; end of the war, 149-50. 
j Nichol, Colonel, with Brock at 

Detroit, 65. 
j Nova Scotia, and the Great 
Blockade, 153. 

! Ogdensburg, 53 ; destroyed by 
] the British, 105-6. 
, Oswego, captured by the Brit- 
j ish, 151. 

j Pearson, Colonel, at Lundy's 
i Lane, 141-4. 

; Perry, Captain, 109 ; his victory 
' on Lake Erie, 119-22. 
Phips, Sir William, his inva- 
sion of Canada, 17-18, 172. 
Pitt, William, friendly towards 

United States, 5-6. 
Plattsburg, 99 ; a British raid 
on, 119 ; the American victory 
at, 157-68. 
Plenderleath, Major, his charge 

at Stoney Creek, 112. 
Porter, General, on Smyth's 
campaign on the Niagara 
frontier, 98-9. 
Prairie du Chien, captured by 

the British, 136. 
Prevost, Sir George, governor- 
general of Canada and com- 
mander-in-chief, 50-1, 33, 105, 
107, 124, 125, 151 ; his one- 
sided armistice, 74, 76, 77 ; 
his failure at Sackett's Har- 
bour, iio-ii ; his disgraceful 
campaign against Platts- 



II 



INDEX 



i8i 



burg-, 157-68 ; his career and 
character, 50, 74-5. 

Prince of Wales's Leinster 
reg-iment, their feat of arms 
at Fort Niagara, 132-3. 

Pring", Captain, 119; v/ith 
Downie at the battle of Lake 
Champlain, 163, 168. 

Procter, Colonel, in command 
at Amherstburg-, 58, 61, 73, 
120, 122 ; defeats Americans 
at Frenchtown, but fails at 
Forts Meig-s and Stephenson, 
105-7 ; defeated at Moravian 
Town, 122. 

Purdy, Colonel, defeated at 
Chateauguay, 126-8. 

Quebec, 13, 153 ; loyalty of in 
1812, 31 ; her Army Bill Act, 
39-40 ; the real centre of Can- 
adian defence, 46, 47, 50. 

Queenston Heights, battle of, 

77-95- 

Red House, American success 

at, 97. 
Riall, General, defeated at 

Chippawa, 138-9 ; wounded 

at Lundy's Lane, 141-8. 
Ripley, General, with Brown 

at Chippawa, 139. 
Roberts, Captain, captures 

Michilimackinac, 58-9, 60. 
Rodgers, Commodore, his dis- 
concerting cruise, 42-3. 
Rolette, Lieut., cuts Hull's line 

of communication along- the 

Detroit, 56, 64-5. 
Ross, General, his attack on 

Washington, 155-7. 
Rototte, Lieut., killed at St 

Regis, 99. 



Sackett's Harbour, 53, 76 ; 
British failure at, iio-ii. 

St David's, the burning of, 140- 
141. 

St Joseph's Island, 46, 59, 136. 

St Regis, 99. 

Salaberry, Charles de, his vic- 
tory at Chateauguay, 123-8. 

Sandy Creek, British disaster 
at, 151. 

Schuyler, Peter, his 'Glorious 
Enterprize,' 17. 

Scott, Colonel Hercules, at 
Lundy's Lane, 143-8. 

Scott, General Winfield, 26; 
his surrender at Queenston 
Heights, 93, 94; at Chippawa, 
139 ; wounded at Lundy's 
Lane, 143-8. 

Secord, Laura, her heroic jour- 
ney, 114-15- 

Sheaffe, General, at Queenston 
Heights, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91, 
92-4; succeeds Brock, 96; 
his failure at York, 107-8. 

Sherbrooke, Sir John, lieuten- 
ant-governor of Nova Scotia, 

50» 154- 
Smyth, General, 78, 79, 81, 91 , 

succeeds to the American 

command on the Niagara, 96 ; 

his campaign, 98-9. 

Stoney Creek, battle of, 111-12. 

Taylor, Major, captures two 
American gunboats, 1 18-19. 

Tecumseh, the great War 
Chief, 57, 65-6, 67, 106; his 
ambuscade at Brownstown, 
61, 65 ; his meeting with 
Brock, 65-7, 69, 71, 73; killed 
at Moravian Town, 122. 

Tompkins, Governor, his cun- 
ning political move, 79-80. 



i82 THE WAR WITH THE STATES 



Tucker, Colonel, with Drum- 
mond on the Niagara frontier, 
142. 

United Empire Loyalists, their 
antagonism towards United 
States, 14, 31-2, 140 ; in the 
War of 1812, 37, 6^' 

United States, their grievances 
against Britain, 1-3, 5 ; their 
national desires, 3-5, 14, 17- 
I9» 54 > the * Chesapeake ' 
affair, 10-12 ; the Embargo 
Act, 13 ; pro- British and anti- 
British sentiment in, 14-19, 
41 ; their navy and naval pol- 
icy, 22-6, 42-4, 55-6, I GO- 1, 
152; their army and military 
policy, 26-9, 46, 47-9, 64, 100 ; 
their resources, 29, 40; declare 
war against Britain, 41 ; fail- 
ure of 1812 campaign, 73, 100- 
loi ; the 1813 campaign policy, 
101-2; the Great Blockade, 
152-3 ; some benefits derived 
from the war, 170-1. See 
War of 1812. 

Van Rensselaer, Colonel Solo- 
mon, wounded in attack on 
Queenston Heights, 80, 81, 

83. 

Van Rensselaer, General, 79- 

80 ; his attack on Queenston 
Heights, 78, 89-90, 92. 
Vincent, General, in command 
of Upper Canada, 109-10, 
III, 112. 

Wadsworth, General, in attack 
on Queenston Heights, 93, 
94. 

Wallis, Sir Provo, his honour- 
able record, 117-18. 



War of 1812, the : c,g,us.es-af, i- 
4, 10-12, 16-17 ; a comprehen- 
sive view of all the operations, 
20-2, 33-4, 43-7, 76-7, 100-4, 
1 18-19, 134-5, 149-54, 157, 168- 
174 ; the American forces, 21- 
29, 40 ; the British forces, 22, 
30-40. The 1812 Cam- 
paign : American frigate 
victories, 44; American in- 
vasion of Canada defeated 
at Detroit, 54-73 ; Prevost's 
armistice, 74, 76, 77 ; Queens- 
ton Heights, 76-94; Sheaffe's 
armistice, 96 ; Americans 
again foiled on the Niagara 
frontier, 97-9 ; and on the 
Montreal frontier, 99-100. 
The 1813 Campaign : Brit- 
ish naval supremacy, 44-5, 
116-17 ; American success in 
the West and on Lake Erie, 
104-7, 119-22; British re- 
1 verse at York and failure at 
Sackett's Harbour, 107- 11 ; 
American operations on the 
Niagara frontier defeated at 
Stoney Creek, Beaver Dams, 
and Fort Niagara, 109-10, 
111-16, 118, 131-3; British 
raids on the Montreal frontier, 
1 18-19; Americans defeated 
at Chateauguay and Chryst- 
ler's Farm, 123-31. THE 
1814 Campaign : British 
triumph in the West, 135-6 ; 
Americans supreme on Lake 
Erie, 136-7 ; British victory 
at Lundy's Lane and final 
retiral of Americans from the 
Niagara frontier, 137-50 ; 
British operations on Lake 
Ontario, 150-1 ; American 
failure on Montreal frontier. 



INDEX 



183 



151-2; the Great Blockade 
and British attacks on Maine 
and Washington, 152-7, 168-9; 
American victory at Platts- 
burg, 157-68; Treaty of 
Ghent, 169; effects of the 
war, 169-72. 
Washington, the British attack 

on, 153, 154-7- , ^ 
Watteville, General de, 125. 
Wellington, Duke of, desires 

peace with United States, 45. 
Wilkinson, General, his plan 

of attack on Montreal, 119, 

123, 128, 130-I, 151-2. 



Willcocks, Colonel, a Canadian 

renegade, 140. 
Winchester, General, defeated 

at Frenchtown, 105. 
Winder, General, at Bladens- 

burg Races, 155-6. 
Wool, Captain, in the attack 

on Queenston Heights, 83, 

87, 88, 89. 

Yeo, Captain Sir James Lucas, 
in command of the British on 
the Lakes, no, 112, 150. 

York, Brock's difficulties in, 52, 
53-4 ; capture of, 107-9, 154. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



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